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THE
HERB OF THE FIELD.
RErRINTED FROM
“CHAPTERS ON FLOWERS,”
IN THE “ MAGAZINE FOR THE YOUNG.”
“ And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his
kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his
kind : and God saw that it was good.” — Genesis, i. 12.
“ By His care the tender grass
Springs where flock or herd shall pass ;
He the riper blade assigned
For a treasure to mankind.
So might earth her store impart ;
The new wine cheer man’s sinking heart ;
So with oil his brow might brighten,
Bread his sinking spirit lighten.” —
Psalm civ. Oxford Psalter.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
TIIE KTNGS OF ENGLAND,” “ LANGLEY SCHOOL,”
“ SCENES AND CHARACTERS,” &C.
®>ccontJ i£tJition.
LONDON:
J. AND C. MOZLEY, 6, PATERNOSTER ROW ;
MASTERS AND CO. 78, NEW BOND STREET.
1858.
PREFACE.
These Chapters must not be considered so much
as a work on Botany, as an attempt to bring the
wonders of the vegetable world under the notice
of children, and lead them to take interest in the
plants around them.
Of their irregularity the author is well aware.
They were begun with a view to the flowers of
each month ; but the necessity of some plan,
caused each chapter to contain a sketch of a
natural order; in which, however, she begs she
may not be supposed to include the u last bells of
summer,” or the u Christmas evergreens.”
After the twelfth chapter, the Linna3an classes
were gone through, in order to pick up such
plants as had been omitted, and in arranging them
for separate publication, the same order has been
IV
PREFACE.
preserved, as the earlier chapters are the easiest,
and after going through them, a child will be
better able to understand the latter ones.
Long words have been avoided as much as
possible; and something of system and science
has been sacrificed to the desire to give no formid-
able appearance to the page. It is hoped that
there is nothing contrary to scientific botany, and
that such as pursue the study further, will find
their way smoothed, and that thev have nothing
to unlearn.
We believe that the want has been long felt, of
a book on plants sufficiently free from botanical
terms, and with amusement enough to give young
children a pleasure in the knowledge of flowers ;
and it is hoped that the u Herb of the Field5'
may be found in some way to supply this need.
A few of the chapters read to a child, with the
examination of the flowers therein described,
would probably excite its interest in the rest.
It was with a view to village children that the
chapters were at first written, in the hope of
rousing them from the indifference to wild flowers,
that causes almost everything to be classed as a
lily or a poppy. To teach them to value, and
V
PREFACE.
observe, and perceive the wide-spread beauties
in the woods and fields around them, is opening
a great source of happiness, and leading them to a
pursuit of a refining and softening nature, one of
the best of the subordinate means of cultivation.
And it is very easily done. To ask if they
know the name of a plant, to notice the pride of
their Sunday nosegays, to reveal some of those
marvels they have never perceived in the interior
of a blossom, is a sure way to produce delighted
smiles and animated looks ; and simple lessons on
natural objects are certain to be enjoyed and re¬
membered. Or when connected with the subject
where all teaching begins and ends, there is surely
no means better suited for showing to young
minds at once the mercy and majesty of the
Creator, than the display of the exquisite love¬
liness and perfect contrivance of those minute
plants, so common that they have hitherto passed
them by without heed.
It is for such readers as these, who will never
be likely to have time or means for the study of
complete botanical works, but who nevertheless
take delight in knowing intimately the dwellers
in meadow, wood, or wayside, that the classifi-
VI
PREFACE.
cation' of English plants has been given at the
end, hoping that they may be thus assisted in
learning the names of the fair forms that refresh
their eyes.
BOTANICAL TERMS EMPLOYED.
Pistil — tlie central point of the flower, which becomes
the seed-vessel.
Stigma — the top of the pistil.
Style — the column of the pistil.
Germ — the bottom of the pistil, containing the seed.
Stamens — the cases of pollen, supported on stalks.
Anther — the case containing pollen.
Pollen — the dust of the anthers, which makes the germ
fertile.
Filament — the thread-like stems that support the
anthers.
Corolla — the whole case in which the stamens and
pistil are contained, usually the coloured
part of the flower.
Petal — a single leaf of the corolla.
Nectary — the honey-cup in the corolla.
Calyx — the green cup enclosing the corolla.
Spathe — a sheath like that of a daffodil.
Receptacle — the bottom of the calyx, or top of the
stem on which the flower grows.
Superior corolla — a corolla growing above the germ.
Inferior corolla — growing below the germ.
Vlll
BOTANICAL TERMS EMPLOYED.
Capsule — little purse, the case where the seed is con¬
tained.
Bract — a leaf growing at the foot of the flower-stalk.
Cotyledon — a seed-leaf, which springs up first, then
falls off.
Alternate leaves — those growing by turns on opposite
sides of the stem.
Serrate leaves — those notched like a saw.
Linear — long narrow ones.
Pinnate — winged, such as vine leaves.
Cyme — a head of blossom, like elder.
Umbel — a head like hemlock.
Frond — a fern, or sea-weed leaf.
Imbricated — scales growing one over the other, as in
a fir-cone.
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
CHAPTER I.
FEBRUARY FLOWERS.
THE SNOWDROP AND CROCUS.
Everyone loves flowers, and well we may, for there
is nothing on earth so beautiful or so pure as they.
The choice rare flowers of hotter climates, are some of
the most delicious of the luxuries enjoyed by the rich ;
the trim, bright garden-bed is the delight of many who
And little to cheer them elsewhere ; even in the close
and smoky town a few plants are cherished like darl¬
ings, and the glorious multitudes that are spread in the
woods and valleys form no small part of the pleasures
of the country child.
We may vrell be thank fid that our Maker has given
us such plenty of these fairest among His works,
showering them upon us in such profusion, as to show
how great must be the power and the kindness of Him
who made every plant in the field before it grew,
arraying them more richly than Solomon in all his
glory. He is a kind father who provides for the plea¬
sure and amusement of his children, as well as for their
safety and comfort ; and so those who delight in sweet
flowers, should return especial thanks for the loving¬
kindness which has provided such joys for them.
1
2
TriE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
Perhaps it may be some assistance in rendering our
thanks for these, Ilis beautiful works, to be led to ex¬
amine a little into their structure, and the wonderful
perfection of their parts, of which many who admire
their brilliant colouring are very ignorant.
We will begin with a February flower, which all are
glad to see, when it first pushes up its green case above
the dark mould, and gradually opening, shows its pure
white drop of a bud, hanging on a tiny stem, and at
last opening into the delicate bell of “vernal green,
and virgin white.”
Well, then, take a snowdrop, and if you can find it
in your heart to do it, and if it can be spared out of the
garden, pull it up by the root ; for I want to tell you
about it from beginning to end, from the top of the
little green banner that waves above the white bell,
down to the last fibre of the strings at the bottom of
the root.
It will be the best way to begin with the root, the
round, hard root, which is called a bulb, and which, if
you cut it in two, you will find to consist of a number
of flakes, or coats, fitting closely one over the other.
An onion has a root of the same kind, as you must
have often seen. If you had cut open this root in the
end of last autumn, and looked at it with a strong
magnifying-glass, you might have seen the whole tiny
snowdrop-plant, leaves, stem, blossom, and all, lying
tightly curled up safe within all the numerous outer
coats, waiting for the first breath of spring to push its
way out into the air.
The fibres, or strings, that hang below, are so many
mouths with which the plant sucks nourishment out of
the ground ; the tall, sword-sliaped leaves, which all
spread out from the root, may be said to be the means
THE SNOWDROP AND CROCUS.
tl
o
by which it breathes, for they conduct the air into the
numerous tiny air-cells of which the plant is full ; and
a plant, as you well know, can no more live without
air, drink, and its own kind of food, than you can.
Next comes the one long green stem, with its moist, juicy
inside, through which the air and sap are conducted to
nourish the blossom. At the end is a sort of sheath,
in which the blossom was safely packed up when first it
budded forth, until, as spring came on, the bud swelled
and swelled, till the sheath could hold it no longer,
but opened at the side, and let the round bud drop out
and hang down by its little slender footstalk.
Now comes what we call the flower ; and here you
must learn several hard names, if you wish to be able
to understand what I am going to tell you about
plants. The prettily coloured, or white leaves of a
flower, are properly named petals. Of these in the
snowdrop there are six, three larger ones outside, curv¬
ed and perfectly white, and three lesser ones within,
with a notch in the middle, and marked with green.
That is, if you have taken a single snowdrop ; if you
have a double one, I can go no further, for there the
petals, which are of no real use except to protect the
important parts of the flower within, are so multiplied
that they have used up all the strength of the plant,
and even consumed these really useful parts ; so that,
as everybody knows, a double flower never produces
good fruit, but only rejoices in its own finery for a time.
Not unlike some people that I could tell you of.
But we will suppose you have a good, quiet, modest
snowdrop, with its green and white robes in good
order, and put to their proper use, of guarding and
sheltering what is within them. Inside of the three
green-marked petals, you will find seven little threads,
4
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
all perched upon a green cushion, called sometimes the
germ, and sometimes the receptacle. The middle one
of these is straight, with a forked top, and is called the
pistil ; the six others are the stamens, and each of them
is surmounted by a sort of long narrow case, called an
anther, filled with a kind of dust, named pollen.
This pollen, as the anthers open, is shed upon the
pistil, and passing along it to the receptacle, there turns
to seed ; the petals die away, and the receptacle swells,
day by day, as you will see if you watch carefully, till
at last it grows to a capsule, like a bag, or rather a
purse. You may have seen purses divided into com¬
partments for gold, silver, and copper ; and the capsule
of the snowdrop is divided something in the same man¬
ner into three cells, each of them full of round seeds,
and every one of these seeds has a minute plant wrap¬
ped up inside of it.
Happy the children who live where snowdrops grow
wild, and very proud of them they are, for it is not
often that they are so found ; indeed, some people think
that it is not an English flower at all, but has only
made its escape, as we may say, from gardens. I know
of a dell, in the garden of what was once a convent,
which is full of these beautiful flowers, in such num¬
bers, that one might gather for half the day without
making it look much less white.
But we must take our leave of the “ Fair-Maids-of-
February,” and go on to their first cousin, the crocus,
the long thready leaves of which, with the white stripe
in the middle, shoot out in readiness for spring, before
even the Christmas holidays are over. In an early
spring, crocuses are in blossom before the end of Feb¬
ruary, their dry withered sheath hanging down over
the bulb, and their rich golden yellow flowers seeming
THE SNOWDROP AND CROCUS.
0
almost to reflect the brightness of the sun-beams, in
their depth of rich, glowing yellow. And how the
bees delight in rolling deep within them, seeking for
the honey which is stored in the cup, or nectary,* as it
is called, at the bottom of the petals ! All crocuses
have six petals, bulbous roots, long narrow leaves, and
a sheath ; but they differ from the snowdrop in having
no stem, and only three stamens instead of six. The
pistil, too, has a pretty branching crown, called a
stigma, and the petals are all of the same size and
shape.
The brilliant yellow spring crocus grows wild in
Syria, and has only been cultivated in England for
about two hundred years. It shows its love for the
bright sun of its native land, by only opening on sun¬
shiny days, amh closing up fast in frost and fog, though,
like a sweet gentle temper, it is always ready to open
again on the first encouragement.
It3 brothers, in purple and in striped coats, are not
quite so pretty to look at from a distance, though,
when close to them, they are very elegant flowers ; the
long, forked, orange-coloured stigma of the purple one,
shows off to great advantage with the colour of the
petals.
The crocus root dies away every year after forming
a new bulb, or sometimes two, close by its side, and
thus the plant gradually changes its place till it comes
quite out of the border where it was at first planted.
The purple crocus is English, and grows in great
quantities in the fields about Nottingham.
There are other sorts which blossom in the autumn,
of which I will just mention the saffron crocus, which
is grown in great quantities in Essex and Suffolk.
* So called from Nectar, a sweet drink.
6
THE IIEUE OF TIIE FIELD.
The stigma, which is very large, is picked off by
women and children, and laid out on linen cloths to
dry in a heated room, after which it is put in paper
bags, and sold, to be used in many ways, one of which
those who like saffron buns will soon recollect, as well
as those who have to doctor their pet canary-birds in
the moulting season.
Bulbous-rooted flowers have, then, as you should
recollect, six petals ; either six or three stamens, with
anthers ; one pistil, consisting of a germ, style, * and
stigma ; usually straight, soft stems, without branches ;
leaves either growing from the root or on the stem ;
and sheathes in which the young blossom is enclosed.
CHAPTER II.
MARCH FLOWERS.
TIIE DAFFODIL AND HAZEL.
Wiio can pass by the 1st of March without a word
or two of the Lent Lil}r, the beautiful yellow daffodil ?
The Latin name of the daffodil is Narcissus ; and there
was an old heathen story, that there was once a youth
who was always admiring his own beauty, looking at
his face reflected in clear pools and streams, (for it
was before looking-glasses were invented,) till he was
punished for his foolish vanity, by being changed into
the flower which still hangs down its head, as he hung
his over the water.
* The style is the long stem of the pistil, and is named from
the shape of the iron styles, or pens, which were used in old
times for writing on tablets of wax.
THE DAFFODIL AND HAZEL.
7
Certainly he has not left off wearing a very gay
dress, though I never yet saw him near the water, hut
always in copses and woody banks. How pleasant it
is to see those multitudes of yellow flowers scattered
all over the ground ! And how delightful to gather
them, blossom after blossom, and still it does not seem
as if the numbers were in the least thinned ! And
then, when the hands are as full as ever they can hold,
to tic the stalks up in a hard solid bundle, cut them
all to one length, and make a present of the noble
golden nosegay ; or put it into a cup of water, or per¬
haps send it to market, where it may be bought by
some town person, who does not often see a fresh
flower.
I remember that my nurse did not always like my
daffodil nosegays, because there were no leaves, and
she said the flowers were too gaudy, but I did not
think so ; the six outer petals are so soft and delicate,
and the deep yellow bell inside is so bright and beau¬
tiful, and has such a curious kind of sparkle upon it,
and then its edge is so beautifully quilled and scal¬
loped, I used to turn the flower upside-down, and
fancy it a fairy’s dress ; the deep yellow bell her
golden petticoat ; and the petals above, her pale gauze
robe, deeply cut ; while her boddice was the green re¬
ceptacle on which they grow.
The yellow petticoat is really the nectary or honey-
cup ; garden narcissuses and jonquils, which blossom
later, have the nectary likewise, only smaller; and
there is also another sort which grows wild in some
places, called sometimes the poetic narcissus, and some¬
times butter-and-eggs. The petals of this are quite
white, and the nectary yellow, trimmed with red, and
a very pretty flower it is, though I can never like it
8
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
quite as well as the old daffodil. Perhaps those do,
however, who have known it all their lives as an old
friend, and have put it into their first May garland.
Narcissuses and jonquils are often kept in glasses
of water or flower-pots all the winter in the house ;
their bulbs put down long fibres into the water, and
suck up juice enough for the support of the plant,
so that it puts up its almond-shaped bud, spreads its
long green leaves, and unfolds its yellow flower, so as
to be the pleasure of all in the house. I have heard
of a little sick boy in London, who laid on his bed
close to the black smoky window, with no amuse¬
ment but watching day after day how his three jonquils
grew and budded, and when at last he died, he left
them as his choicest treasure to a friend who had been
kind to him.
Excepting the large nectary, the narcissus differs
but little in structure from the snowdrop, as you will
soon find by examining it. The brown sheath hangs
withered behind the flower; the pistil and the six
stamens rise like a fluted pillar in the middle of the
nectary ; the germ is round, and when ripe, becomes a
capsule filled with seeds ; and the leaves are long and
narrow, growing directly from the root.
So we will leave the daffodil and its relations, and
look a little further in the copse. What are these
long, soft-looking tassels, hanging out of these dry
sticks ?
O, those are not flowers, those are pussey cats, says
one child ; they are cats’ tails, says another ; and I
for my own part should call them catkins, though that
is not a much wiser name, since catkin can mean
nothing but little cat.
And pray what is the bush they grow upon ? Ten
THE DAFFODIL AND IIAZEL.
9
to one that few of you can tell me, unless, perhaps,
you happen to remember that somewhere hereabouts
last autumn, you picked a capital bunch of nuts, and
have a guess that it must have been off this very bush.
And so it was ; and this is a hazel nut bush ! But
where do the nuts come from, and what have the
pussey’s tails to do there, since I never yet heard that
cats were apt to hang up their tails to dry on hazel
bushes? Nor do I think that these things are very
much like them.
Ah ! now you look very wise, you have a guess.
Why should not pussey’s tails turn to nuts, as well as
apple blossom to apples ? Let us see, then, what the
catkin is really made of.
It is formed of a great number of little scales one
over the other, some pale green, some buff, and some
a little shaded with red, and within each of these scales
there are some yellow things, eight of them, which
yellow things are fast covering your fingers with dust.
That dust is pollen, and those eight are anthers’ stamens,
only that they have no legs, properly called filaments,
and the scales are petals, so that each catkin is in reality
a string of tiny flowers.
After all they are but half flowers, for if you remem¬
ber, it is the pistil, and not the stamens, of the snow¬
drop that turns to seed, and these anthers have no seed
in them. Perhaps the pistil is in another part of the
catkin. No, peep into scale after scale, and still there
are nothing but anthers, so that we must look a little
further to find the young nut.
See, a little lower on the branch, here is a hard
brown bud, much like those that turn to leaves, except
that it has a cluster of pretty crimsom threads at the
top, a sort of red feather in its cap. Here lives the
10
THE IIEEB OF THE FIELD.
nut, here are the pistil-hearing flowers, for the hazel
keeps its stamens and pistils in different blossoms.
Let the neatest hand and most delicate fingers pull
off one by one the brown scales in which the bud has
been guarded all the winter. Inside, there is first a
quantity of soft hair to keep it warm, and in the midst
are several very small green cups, each containing a
tiny germ, on which grow two crimson threads, the
stigma of the pistil. If you can manage to look at it
through a magnifying-glass, you vTill understand it
much better, and see that the little germ is very nearly
of the shape of a nut.
The pussey’s tails will shake off their dust, some of
it will be carried off by the bees to serve as flour for
their bee-bread, some will float away on the wind, and
some will be caught by the crimson crest of this nest
of little nuts. Then the catkins will wither and fall
off, but the little nuts will swell and enlarge as the year
advances.
The crimson stigmas will turn purple, and shrivel
up, the scales will open, the cups will grow longer and
more leafy, and the germs harden into outer shells, in
which there grow at length the white sweet kernels.
Each of these kernels is, as you remember, apt to break
into two equal parts when the nut is cracked, and
there is apt to be a stringy, scaly piece between them.
This string is the young stem of the infant hazel, and if
the nut was in the ground, and allowed to grow, the
two halves of the kernel would produce two cotyledons
or seed-leaves, which would be pushed above ground
by the young stem.
I dare say you think that those two white, pleasant-
tasting half-kernels may be put to a different use before
ever they have time to make seed-leaves, or cotyledons.
THE DxlFFODIL AND HAZEL.
11
What fun it is to pull them down from the tree, bunch
after bunch, one, two, three, aye, sometimes half-a-
dozen in a cluster ! crack, crunch ! Oh ! I hope you
have good teeth !
Something else has good teeth if you have not ; the
pretty little squirrel, with his bushy tail, likes to lay
up a store of nuts for his winter hoard, and sit up
holding them in his paws, and nibbling away the shell.
So does the wood-mouse, who makes his nest in the
moss under the tree. But how can the nut-hatch con¬
trive, that pretty bird, with the grey back and black
streak over the eye, he is as fond of nuts as the mouse
or the squirrel, but he lias no paws to hold them, so how
can he get at the kernel, through that hard shell ?
The nut-liatch chooses a chink between two stones,
or in the bark of a tree, where he can firmly fix the
nut, like a piece of wood in a carpenter’s vice, and
there he hammers it, tap, tap, with his strong beak, till
he lias broken out a hole large enough for him to ex¬
tract the kernel.
Between the children, the squirrels, mice, and nut¬
hatches, to say nothing of the little, round, white mag¬
gots, which all like nuts, it would seem as if there
might be few left to grow into fresh hazel bushes, and
perhaps it is for this reason that the bush throws up
shoots from the root, which grow up into stems in time.
And how many things the branches are useful for ?
What would green peas and scarlet runners do without
them ? Others, again, are split in half and made into
hoops, to be put round casks. A very pretty winter
sight is the hoop-shaving : the copsewood all cut down ;
the great piles of white chips ; the tall heap of hoops,
placed regularly one over the other, so as to look like
a barrel already ; the long white bundles of rods, for
12
THE ITEIvB OF TIIE FIELD.
crates, set up on end, leaning against each other ; and
the little hut made of sticks and covered with chips,
with sometimes a fire, with the smoke curling up, be¬
tween the great old trees that still are left standing,
though all the brushwood is down.
©
Then, too, the hazel-sticks make withes for binding,
and are woven into hurdles for sheep ; yes, and the
first Christian flock in England were enclosexl within
hazel walls. It was of wattled hurdles that the first
Church was made that was raised at Glastonbury, and
it was long before our forefathers were able to form
these holy buildings of more solid materials.
There are no hazel leaves to look at now, they are
all folded up in the little hard, brown buds, and will
not come out till May. Then, perhaps, you may re¬
member to observe the serrated or saw-like ed<je of the
leaf, and the numbers of little branches at the back,
like a net-work, to serve as channels for the sap.
CHAPTER III.
APRIL FLOWERS.
ANEMONE AND RANUNCULUS.
An April nosegay ! It is much easier to gather one
than a March nosegay ; indeed, there are so many
flowers now, that I can only choose out a few to talk
about, as it would take too long to dwell upon them all.
The Easter flower is commonly called the Pasque
flower, from the word Paschal. It is very pretty, deep
purple, and with yellow stamens ; but it is not very
ANEMONE AND RANUNCULUS.
16>
o
common. I will go on to another flower of the same
genus, the wood-anemone.
Anemone means windflower, and this I believe is the
English name often given to this very pretty ornament
of our woods, which some village children call smell-
foxes. It is rather difficult to get at the root of the
wood-anemone, as it is deep in the earth, and creeping,
putting down clusters of fibres into the ground, and
shooting up stems at short distances apart. Each stem
has a sort of joint about half-way up, whence spring
three leaf stalks, each stalk bears three leaves, and
these leaves are again notched deeply into three divi¬
sions, and altogether they spread out most gracefully
below the slender stem which bears the modest blos¬
som, bending down its head and folding its wings in
wet weather or at night, and opening them again to
rejoice in the delicious spring sunshine.
The six petals are usually of a delicate pearly white ;
but sometimes, especially later in the season, they have
a tinge of lilac, and I have now and then seen one
quite purple. Within are quite a crowd of stamens
with yellow anthers, too many to count, and in the
middle what you might suppose to be a single great
pistil, without style or stigma, but in reality it is a
multitude of very small ones joined together, which
will all become separate seeds in the course of the
summer. How delicate the flower is ! it is in vain to
try to gather it for a nosegay, for it is sure to droop its
pretty head and fade before it can be brought home,
and we must be content to leave them in their bed of
fresh green moss, and brown, crackling, last year’s
leaves at the foot of the tree, studding over the coppice
like so many white stars.
I think that the wood-anemone may put us in mind
14
TIIE HERB OF TIIE FIELD.
of some quiet, shy, modest girl, who makes all sunny
and happy round her in her own safe, shaded home ;
while, perhaps, she has gayer and brighter sisters or
cousins who can do their work as well in less sheltered
scenes, and wear their company-robes as modestly as
she her humbler dress.
The anemone has such sisters — pretty Miss Iiepatica
Anemone, in her blue or pink robe, with her large,
handsome three-cleft, dark-green parasol, is one of
them ; but she is not less quiet and retiring than her
woodland sister, for she, too, hangs down her head,
and hides under her leaves at night ; and, somehow,
she always prospers more in a cottage garden than in
grander places, perhaps remembering that her native
home is on the Swiss Mountains, and in the islands of
the Baltic, where she shoots up through the snow. She
is the first spring flower of the Danes and Swedes.
There is one of the family, however, who is quite
at home in any garden, however grand — Mr. Poppy
Anemone, her large, handsome brother, with his multi¬
tude of black stamens, and great black lump of pistils,
the styles of which grow so thick together that they
seem like hair. lie has an endless variety of beautiful
dresses : sometimes he appears in rich scarlet, some¬
times in crimson or purple, and sometimes in quite a
ladylike robe of white, trimmed with purple or pink,
lie is a great friend of the gardeners, who think they
can get him to do anything to please them, and persuade
him to alter his shape, wear all manner of flounces and
furbelows, and disguise himself in such strange fashion
that his best friends would hardly know him again.
Sometimes, indeed, he wastes all his substance in thus
doubling the folds of his robes, but if not, after about a
fortnight, he takes off all his beautiful red or purple gar¬
ments, and rolls himself up in his plain working dress,
15
ANEMONE AND RANUNCULUS.
very like a grey duffle cloak. By-and-bye, the grey coat
seems to come unravelled, just as if you were to undo
a knitted glove, and it will prove to he formed of a
multitude of little yellow seeds, each with its own white
wing of cotton, with which, if left to itself, it would fly
away to seek a home ; but the gardeners are on the
watch for them and catch them, that they may take
good care of their feeding and education, so that they
may grow up as fine, or finer, gentlemen than their father.
I have read a description in a book of travels in the
Holy Land, of the country near the sea of Galilee.
The ground, early in the spring, is covered with a
thick, close carpet of crimson anemones, above which
are a number of half-withered stems of grass. Some¬
times, through a narrow opening in the mountains,
there comes a sudden gust of wind, waving aside for a
moment all the grass in the line of its course, and
showing the crimson flowers beneath, so that it seems
like a mysterious river of blood, suddenly appearing for
one instant, and as quickly passing away.
Several other flowers are in blossom now, belonging
to the same many-stamened race (called by botanists
Polyandria*) as the anemone. First there is the
ranunculus tribe, and you will wonder to hear that
these are no other than your old golden friends, the
buttercups, kingcups, or crowfoot, whichever you may
usually call them. There they are with their five,
glossy, yellow petals, their numerous stamens, and their
lump of little, round, horn-shaped pistils. They have
also five small green leaves growing under the petals,
and this part of the flower is called the calyx or cup.
There are many different kinds — the creeping crowfoot,
which is such an enemy to the farmer in grass fields,
Polys, many ; andria, stamens.
16
THE HERB OF THE FIELD,
for though it used to be a saying that buttercups made
the butter yellow, this is quite a mistake, for you may
see that cattle always leave the stems when they have
eaten the grass all round ; and the truth is, that all
plants of the tribe Polyandria, that is, with many
stamens growing out of the receptacle, are poisonous.
Then there is the corn-crowfoot, with its very curious¬
toothed and jagged seed-vessels, and the white water-
crowfoot, which has large, tliree-cleft leaves to float on
the top of the water, and serve to bear it up there, and
also thick clusters of fibrous, mossy leaves, to keep
under water and suck up moisture with. It varies re¬
markably in size, for in a deep running stream, or large
pond, it is a handsome flower, while in a little puddle
or gutter it is so very small, that the first time I met
with it I could scarcely believe it to be the same
flower. We must not forget the earliest of all butter¬
cups, sometimes called pilewort, and sometimes small
celandine, the structure of which is different from the
others, in order to suit its early blossoming. It has ten
instead of five petals, and three divisions in the calyx,
and the reason of this difference is believed to be that
it may be better able to close over and protect its
stamens and pistils in case of early frost. I have a
great kindness for the pilewort ; for its sunny, golden
face, coming to greet us so early, and the pretty brown
shading outside ; nor are its shining, heart-shaped
leaves devoid of beauty.
Garden ranunculuses are many ; Bachelor’s Buttons,
also called Fair-Maids-of-France, are a double sort.
The French call them Esperance, or hope ; and when St.
Louis was a captive among the Mahometans in Egypt,
and could write no letter to console his wife, he sent
her a root of this flower. Its name told her to hope on
PRIMROSES AND VIOLETS.
17
through her hard trial. The great scarlet globe ranun¬
culus has its proper home in Syria. Another April
flower of the same class, and very like a great crowfoot,
is the marsh marigold ; indeed, the only differences be¬
tween it and the ranunculi are, that it has no calyx,
and its pistils are more separated. It has its name
from having been used to dress the churches on the
feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
from Avhose old English title of Our Lady, many other
floAvers take their names.
CHAPTER IV.
MAY FLOWERS.
PRIMROSES AND VIOLETS.
Do you know what a pentagon is ?
Probably not, so here is one to show you.
It is a mathematical figure, with five sides,
and five angles all exactly equal, and all
at the same distance from the centre,
and very troublesome it is to draw one.
But what has it to do with flowers? It relates to them
thus — that it sIioavs the beautiful regularity and design
Avhich is perceptible through all the Avorks of the great
Creator.
Take a primrose, or a periwinkle, and compare it
Avith the pentagon. Five gathered into one, or one
divided into five ; that, as you Avill soon perceive, is
what may be called the principle upon which these,
and many other of our prettiest floA\rers are formed.
First, the primrose has a calyx all in one, a deep,
2
18
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
close, hairy, green cup, with five divisions, and five
points. This incloses a corolla,* also all in one, con¬
sisting of a single petal, which might be compared to a
funnel, as it has a long narrow pipe or throat, fitting
into the calyx below, and above, spreading out into the
five divisions, which, at first sight, one would almost
take for separate petals. What an exquisite colour is
theirs, such as can only be called primrose-colour, for it
is so delicate that it is like no other yellow ; and what
a beautiful little mark of deeper yellow there is at the
lower part of each, so as to make another little penta¬
gon round the throat, corresponding with the cleft in
the middle of each division of the corolla ! How won¬
derful it is that it should be so perfectly regular, with¬
out being stiff or formal !
The end of the throat serves as a nectary ; there is a
sweet drop of juice at the bottom, as the little tiny
black flies that creep in well know, and so do the spar¬
rows, though I am not sure whether it is for the sake of
the flies or of the honey that they are so apt to pick off
the heads of the primroses, and leave the path strewed
with them.
The more important parts of the flower are within
the throat. The five stamens, which have very short
filaments, raise their anthers like a crown, just within,
and in the midst is the pistil, with a round green germ,
a tall slender style, and a stigma just like a pin’s head.
The stalks are of a very pretty pale pink colour, and
covered with down ; the leaves all grow directly from
the root, without leaf-stalks. They have one principal
large rib, like a back- bone, down the middle, and a
number of branches spreading on each side ; and these
* Corolla, another name for the petals or coloured part of the
flower.
PRIMROSES AND VIOLETS.
19
again are connected with each other by lesser veins,
which give the leaf a very curious crumpled appearance.
Nothing is prettier than a fresh, bright bunch of prim¬
roses, the graceful bending stems appearing to repose
upon the green leaves ; and no plant chooses prettier
places for growing ; on the side of a mossy bank, or
niched into the rugged roots of some old tree. There
sits the sweet pale primrose, seeming almost to smile
out of its quiet retreat, and giving forth a delicious mild
fragrance, that seems just suitable to its soft, pure, deli¬
cate flower.
Prime rose means early rose, and in other languages
its name has the same meaning. The French call it
the “ prime vere,” first of the spring, and its Latin
name is Primula, which also means the first.
Primula is, in fact, the family name of the primrose,
and its numerous relations, the first English one of
which is the oxlip. The oxlip’s Latin name is Primula
Elatior, one which I think suits it very well, as it seems
like a conceited elated primrose, which had managed to
perch itself up upon a second set of stalks, and had
thereby grown hard and formal, without the delicate
bending grace of the primrose; and it is curious to see
how like, yet how much less pretty it is, than its quiet
retiring sister. Indeed, botanists are not quite agreed
whether the oxlip is really an aspiring variety of the
primrose, or a distinct species, that is to say, sort of
flower.
The cowslip, which has a second set of stems by na¬
ture, is a much more modest flower ; it muffles up its
throat closely in its long large calyx, and hangs down
its head so as to form one of the bells, which, according
to a pretty German fancy, serve to ring in the spring.
“ In the cowslip’s bell I lie,”
20
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
says the fairy’s song, and no fairy could look for a better-
lined palace, or a more sweetly-perfumed one. The
corolla is like soft yellow velvet, and in each division
there is a beautiful red spot, as if to set off the rest.
The stamens and pistil scarcely vary from those of the
primrose.
Cowslips can hardly be thought of without many a
sunny remembrance of the broad green meadows where
tliejr may be gathered by handfuls, and the borders of
coppices, where, having a richer soil, they grow so much
larger. Oil ! the pleasure of finding a noble, great
cowslip-plant, with four or five stems, and perhaps one
of them with as many as seventeen bells ! Then there
is sure to be an object in gathering cowslips. Perhaps
it ;s for a garland, perhaps for cowslip tea, though 1
suspect the chief niceness in that is, that it is an excuse
for having the pleasure of making a mess, perhaps for
cowslip wine, or, perhaps, best of all, for a cowslip
ball.
Oh ! the deliciously sweet, soft thing ! Let southern
children keep their citrons, while we can have our cow¬
slip balls, as large, as yellow, as fragrant, much softer,
and giving far more pleasure, both in making and the
using. What can compare with the delights of a cowslip
ball ? And yet it may be a trial of temper too, as per¬
haps you may have found, when some little one may
have nipped off her stalks too short, or worse still, let
go the string, so as to make all the cowslips fall down.
If you do not keep your temper in such a case, even a
cowslip ball may bring a painful remembrance with it,
but I will hope better things of you, that so your balls
may have as sweet an odour in remembrance, as during
their short life.
Neither primroses, cowslips, nor oxlips will grow in
PRIMROSES AND VIOLETS.
21
all the counties of England ; and there is a fourth rare
sort, of a purple colour, called the bird’s-eye Primula,
which only grows in the north.
Now we mention purple primroses, the common
regular primrose may be made to turn to an unwhole¬
some-looking, pale purple, by being planted in richer
soil ; the seeds of these empurpled primroses, will grow
up of a deeper richer colour, sometimes purple, some¬
times bright red, preserving the little yellow pentagon
round the throat. Again, they may be doubled, and
there are very pretty lilac double primroses, white ones
too, and others which look as if they were cut out oi
crimson velvet, with little yellow spots.
The cowslip will turn scarlet on being cultivated ;
and by giving the pollen of the coloured primroses to
the pistil of the cowslip, other varieties have been pro¬
duced. That odd flower, like an oxlip with a frill on,
is one, and another is that curious dweller in cottage-
gardens, called Jack-in-a-box, his box being no other
than his calyx, very much enlarged, but a few traces of
its origin still remaining in the green marks on the
edges.
The polyanthus is another variety of the cowslip, and
that to which most attention has been paid. Polyan¬
thus fanciers have shows of them, and are very particu¬
lar that the dark spots on the corolla should be quite
regular, and that there should not be what they call a
pin-eye, that is, that the pin-like head of the pistil
should not appear above the throat. Other people may
be quite contented with the bright yellow and brown
polyanthus, or spring flower, as it is called, without
caring for these fancied beauties.
There are many foreign sorts of Primula. They
grow in great beauty on the Alps, on the borders of
22
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
the snow ; and many sorts have been brought to
England. Auriculas, which name means little ears,
have very curious powdery centres, and are of nume¬
rous colours — green, yellow, or purple.
The last to be mentioned is one which town children
are likely to know, though they may never have seen
a real English primrose, namely, the pretty purple
Chinese primrose, which is grown in pots, and often
to be seen at windows, turning its graceful flowers
towards the light. It is exactly like the wild primrose
in shape, though the colour varies from deep lilac to
pure white, and the leaves are of very different shape.
These early spring flowers almost all have leaves
springing from the root, instead of the stem, perhaps
that they may grow up in shorter time.
Another of the pentagon flowers is the periwinkle,
the most regular perhaps of them all. The throat of
this pretty flower is furnished with a soft white down,
and the pistil in the middle is one of the most exqui¬
sitely-formed things that can be seen anywhere. Look
at the green germ in five divisions, the taper little
brown style, and the wonderfully beautiful stigma, like
a white downy flower within a flower, or, perhaps,
more like a very small model of a round brush. And
the down is very useful in collecting the pollen, and
conducting it to the germ.
If you have a periwinkle copse near you, pray go to
it, and admire the bright blue eyes of the flowers
peeping out among the long wreaths of leaves. The
stems throw themselves out to a great length, and
take root in the earth again, so as to make a net¬
work, in which you might chance to entangle your foot
and get a fall. Pull up one of these, and you will
PRIMROSES AND VIOLETS.
23
see the little white root it is throwing out to lay hold
of the ground with.
These long wreaths seldom blossom, unless some¬
times they do so in despair, because they cannot find
the way to root themselves in the earth. The main
root puts up little straight shoots which bear the buds
and blossoms in the early spring, and when their
flowering-time is over, stretch themselves out into
wreaths. The leaves grow opposite to each other in
pairs, and owing to their thicker and more substantial
structure, retain so much sap, that they remain on all
the winter, and the flower is to be found in blossom
nearly through the whole year, though its full glory is
in April and May. At the end of each long creeping
shoot, there grow two pair of leaves just opposite to
each other, and setting out so as to form a pretty green
cross.
One of the prettiest May garlands I ever saw was
ornamented with long strings of periwinkles, threaded
alternately with cowslips, hanging in festoons all round
it. In Italy, the blue eyes of the periwinkle do not
seem to the people to have the same joyous look as
they have here. The call it the flower of death, be¬
cause it is used to put round the heads of little children
who die young, when they are carried to their graves.
They are not put into coffins, but are dressed in white
frocks, a cross is put between their hands upon their
breast, and with a wreath of the blue flowers round
their hair, they are carried to church, and there lie
looking like wax, till the Psalms and prayers are read
over them, and they are laid in their resting-places. I
suppose the periwinkle is chosen, because it is so frail
and fading a flower.
If you have a river near you, with marshes round
24
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
it, perhaps you may be able to find a beautiful pen¬
tagon flower, the bog-bean, more elegantly, though
less correctly, called the fringed lily. Less correctly,
I say, because all true lilies have six stamens, and six
petals, and I hope the children who read these chapters
may learn a little more about flowers than to call every
thing a lily, even to a white convolvolus, or still worse,
a cowslip.
The delicate pink and white petals of the bog-bean,
are crested with curious white curling fringes, from the
midst of which peep out the five black anthers at
regular distances, like the angles of a pentagon. Did
you ever see a more elegant flower ? I wish its delicate
fringes would not shrivel and turn brown so very soon
after it is gathered — but so it is — pure and delicate
things cannot bear to be rudely touched and examined.
Here, too, is comfrey, with its prickly leaves, and
bells of all shades from purple to white. Ah ! and
how could we pass by the little bright blue turquoise
of a flower, that seems to call out, “ Forget me not !”
Do you know the story of its name? How a lady
begged her lover to gather it for her, and while reach¬
ing it, he fell into the water, and was drowned, calling
out as the flower floated near her, u Forget me not !”
Its proper learned name is mouse-ear-scorpion grass,
because of its pricking, clinging leaves and stems, and
this is, too, the name of the smaller sort in the lanes
and woods, forget-me-not being only the appellation of
the large river kind.
When Henry of Lancaster, afterwards King Henry IV.,
was sent into exile, he gave his friends in England the
forget-me-not flower, formed of jewels, and with the
two letters SS., which stand for the French words Se
Souvenir , meaning “ remember,” so that this plant must
PRIMROSES AND VIOLETS.
25
have had its name long ago. Some people think it
good for the whooping-cough.
This has been a long chapter, but I should be show¬
ing no due honour to the sweet violet, and the painted
heart’s-ease, if I passed them over. They are sisters,
though you would scarcely have guessed it, the name
of both is Viola, and they may be reckoned as pen¬
tagon flowers, since they have five calyx leaves, five
petals, and five stamens. The two upper petals stand
upright, the two next are rather smaller, and opposite
to each other, the louver one has in front a large full
lip, and behind, a curious sort of heel or spur which
is fastened to the calyx, holds the ends of the other
petals, and serves as the nectary, where resides the
honey which causes the sweet smell.
The stamens all meet in a point around the little
round-headed pistil, and they are beautifully protected
by the crests which grow on the inner side of the two
middle petals. These crests are larger and more re¬
markable in the dog-violet than in any other species,
and, indeed, I think the poor dog-violet is rather un¬
justly despised. Look at its grey flowers, with their
black streaks, and bright eyes, perched in their beds of
moss, and so abundant, and so varying in tint, that if
you were to gather only one of each variety as you
passed through but one coppice, you would soon have
a very handsome nosegay.
Every one knows and cares for the sweet violet, blue,
white, and of a certain odd red variety, and the only
doubt is, whether people think the blue or the white
the sweetest. They are of the same species, only the
colour varies according to the soil in which they grow,
the white liking clay, and the blue or real violet-colour,
preferring chalk, so that I have sometimes been able to
26
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
tell which way the school-girls have been walking, by
the nosegays they have brought me.
Next comes the larger, handsomer Viola, though,
after all, the wild heart’s-ease of the south of England
is not much larger than the dog-violet, when you find
its pale cream-coloured flower in the long grass of a
fallow-field. Even then it has some little dark streaks
near the centre, and now and then a purplish stain on
its two upper petals, and in the north it grows much
larger, has the purple and yellow much brighter, and is
far more like our garden flower.
Both those wild varieties have long narrow leaves,
with curiously cut and carved wings growing on each
side of them, and their seed-vessel is a pretty little box
divided into three.
The garden heart’s-ease is produced partly from
these, and partly from one which grows wild on the
Altai Mountains, in Asia. The one I hold in my hand
is quite a common sort, with no fine name, but only
listen to its description. The upper petals, large and
rounded, are of a splendid deep velvety purple, the
lower pair are exactly alike, the ground pale cream-
colour, the outer part marked with a large purple spot,
the inner part with a still darker cluster of purple
dashes, spreading out on either side. The lowest petal
is likewise cream-colour, but with a large yellow mark
in the centre, bordered with purple lines, and imme¬
diately below it another purple spot. Can anything be
more elaborately marked?
What empress in all her splendour ever found purple
to compare with the richness of a heart’s-ease ? The
sort which gardeners call the Black Prince is very
large, and entirely of this deepest purple, except a
little yellow near the eye, and a glorious flower it is.
THE APPLE AND THE ROSE.
27
There are others all yellow, and some with a narrow
blue line all round the edge, but for the most part
they are of purple and yellow mixed, and sometimes
put us in mind of a cat’s face, the eyes, whiskers, and
ears being all clearly marked ; sometimes, too, of a
man, with a purple cap on his head, and a beard on
his chin.
It is probably to the very smiling lace of this purple-
capped gentleman, that the llower owes its name of
heart’s-ease. Village children generally call it love-
anidles, which unmeaning word they have made out
of its old English name of love-in-idleness. It is also
called pansey, from the French pensee, a thought, and
sometimes by the very funny name of three-faces-
under-one-hood.
CHAPTER V.
JUNE FLOWERS.
THE APPLE AND TIIE ROSE.
June is come, and the rugged, crooked thorns, which all
the winter looked like worn, bent, hoary old men, are
now come out like fair young maidens, in robes of green
and veils of white ; and as then the old gentlemen re¬
minded us of summer by wearing here and there a bunch
of green mistletoe, so now the young ladies remind us
of winter by wearing their white like snow upon the
branches. Very like snow indeed, as you will find if
you go and stand under the tree, for the wind brings
down whole showers of the petals on the grass below.
28
THE IIEKB OF THE FIELD.
What is the inside of the flower like ? The structure
may be seen enlarged in the apple-blossom, or the wild
rose, and it will be easier to understand if we look at
them. Here is a wild crab, that will not be too crabbed
to spare us a branch of pink and white flowers. What
a multitude of yellow stamens ! But I thought you said,
when you told us about the buttercup, that all the
many-stamened flowers, which you called by a hard
name beginning with po!>/, were poisonous, and how
can that be if the apple is one of them ?
Well, you are right, I did say that all the polyandria,
or many-stamened class, were poisonous, but look here.
Gather a buttercup from under your feet, or look in the
next field for a scarlet poppy, I dare say there are more
there than the farmer wishes, in spite of their gay red
coats.
Now pull off the calyx of the crowfoot. It does not
make much difference to the flower, and none at all to
the stamens. As to the poppy, it only used its calyx
for a night-cap, when it was in bud, and ungratefully
split it in two, and threw it away, as soon as it opened
to daylight. You may see some in the act of perform¬
ing this operation, the calyx already parted from the
stem, and the scarlet petals crumpled up within it.
But how shall we pull off the calyx of the rose or
apple blossom ? It will not come without pulling the
whole flower to pieces, nay, it even seems a part of this
great solid green lump on which the whole is perched.
This is the difference, knowing which, you could tell
what plants might safely be eaten if you wrere cast on a
desert island, with no monkey to taste for you. All the
plants which have stamens growing out of the calyx
are harmless, all those which can spare their calyx
without injury to the stamens are hurtful.
THE APPLE AND THE KOSE.
20
Besides, how different the seed-vessel is. The
poppy’s great pistil is like an urn, and when the seed is
ripe, the upper part rises up on little supports all round,
so as to let out the seed, and the cover is beautifully
ornamented.
But what is the seed-vessel of the apple-tree ? Who
can tell? Yet in autumn you have a great liking for
that same seed-vessel, which now you cannot even re¬
collect. Must I describe it? The seeds are ten in
number, in pairs, within five cells formed of two valves,
all enclosed within a globe, fleshy, covered with a green
rind, with a slight tinge of red.
Ah! ha! The apple itself! Yes to be sure, and the
pips are the seeds, and the core the valves forming the
cells. There is a discovery for you, which I dare say
you will remember when you screw up your eyes, next
autumn, with eating sharp apples, and find a hard piece
of core in your mouth. Perhaps then you will look for
the calyx, and you will find it risen in the world,
mounted up on the top of the apple, forming what
people call the eye, very much shrivelled and very
small.
As to the young apple, it is no other than the large
round germ beneath the flower, from which the calyx
seems to grow. It is in fact five germs grown together,
each contributing two pips, and a fifth part of the apple
and their five styles and stigmas are to be seen above,
in the midst of their rich nest of yellow stamens, and
the outer walls of beautiful blushing pink and white,
which are so lightly fastened on that they are soon
blown away.
How great is the kindness which has dressed our
useful friend in such robes as these ! Nor is the apple-
tree less beautiful in his autumn garb, gnarled and
30
TIIE HERB OF THE FIELD.
crooked though lie he. Who would wish to see any¬
thing much prettier than the red, yellow, and green
apples that dot his branches all over ? Some sorts in
shining smooth crimson, some red shading into green,
some red and yellow, some so pure and fair a green and
pink that it reminds one of a delicate cheek ; some
again little crumpled things in russet brown, and green
or old worn-out yellow. And as apple-eaters soon
learn, they are an excellent lesson not to trust too much
to the outside.
In counties where cider is made, the glory of the
apple-tree descends in time, and huge piles of golden
red and yellow are heaped up on the grass at the foot
of the trees. Sometimes these piles have beautiful
visitors, the great Red Admiral butterflies, with their
brown velvet wings, edged with scarlet, and brightened
with white, sometimes come in great numbers to flutter
over them. I have counted as many as sixty of these
beautiful creatures at one heap, some flying, others at
rest, slowly opening and closing their wings to enjoy
the heat of the sun.
The pear is almost exactly like the apple in the
structure of both flower and fruit. In the perry¬
making counties, the trees stand up alone in the fields,
and raise their white garlands after a glorious manner
against the blue summer sky.
The cherry, the apricot, peach, and nectarine, all are
of the same family. None of these, as you well know,
if sprung from seed, will produce good fruit, unless they
are grafted with a branch from a better tree, which is
set into their stem, plastered over with clay, and in
time is joined on so as to make one with them, so that
being nourished with their sap, it grows, and brings
fruit like its own parent tree. Even the seed of a good
TIIE APPLE AND THE ROSE.
31
apple would, if ungrafted, produce only sour worthless
crabs.
Is not this like ourselves, born wild and worthless,
but with grace planted in our hearts at baptism, so as
to enable us to bring forth good, not “ wild fruit?” and
should not the grafting of a tree put us in mind to pray
that God will “ graft in our hearts the love of Ilis
name, increase us in true religion, and nourish us with
all goodness?”
The laurel, and the Portugal laurel, with their pretty
spikes of white blossoms and evergreen leaves, are
brethren of the apple, though I would not advise you to
eat their purple berries, as though not actually poison¬
ous, they are not very wholesome. Indeed, out of the
seeds of all this tribe may be extracted the deadly poison
called prussic acid, not that there is enough in any of
them to do us the least harm, and it is this very small
quantity that gives the pleasant flavour to peach
kernels, laurel leaves, almonds, and even hazel nuts.
Now we have had our own fruit-trees, we must not
forget the birds’ fruit-trees, the store provided for those
which gather not into barns. Yes, our heavenly Father
feedeth them, for these white May blossoms, which de¬
light our eyes in the spring, will, by-and-bye, be scarlet
haws for their food, and the white blossom of the black
thorn which came with the cold wind of spring, is
turning already to a purple sloe, or wild plum.
Haws put us in mind of hips, and with them we
come back to the wild rose, below the flower of which
you may already see the beginning of what botany books
are pleased to call the pitcher-shaped fruit, though I can
see very little of such shape in it. At present it verifies
the proverb, “little pitchers have long ears” (I hope
you have not in the sense the proverb means) for it has
32
THE IIEKB OF THE FIELD.
five most beautiful, long, graceful, fringed leaflets, which
form the especial grace and beauty both of the rose and
bud. There is a peculiarity about these leaflets which
is prettily expressed in this riddle : —
“ Of us five brothers at the same time born,
Two, from our birthday, ever beards have worn ;
On other two, none ever have appeared,
While the fifth brother wears but half a beard.”
This is a fine puzzle for most people, but if you cannot
make it out with a rose calyx before your eyes, I think
you must be rather dull.
Admire the five pretty cleft petals of the flower, and
see how their tints vary, some so snowy white, some so
deep and delicate a pink, and is there anywhere to be
seen anything more graceful and lovely than those long
bending wreaths, covered with the elegant leaves, each
consisting of five serrated leaflets, two pair opposite,
and one at the point? And the deep pink buds in their
bowers, and the more fully opened blossoms, and even
the bunch of stamens which has lost its petals, and
doubled back its leaflets, how pretty they all are, and
how well they ornament the hedge !
It may be that you can find the sweet briar or
eglantine growing wild, with its pink flowers, and de¬
licious leaves, and even some of the dog-roses have
slightly fragrant leaves. There are no less than twenty-
two sorts of roses growing wild in this island of ours,
the difference between them being principally marked
by the form of the fruit, of the leaf, and of the thorns.
Scottish roses are more deeply coloured than English
ones, and more briary.
Scottish roses bring us into the garden, and where
shall we stop now? See the flame-coloured Austrian
briar spread itself over the house and show its beau-
THE APPLE AND THE ROSE.
33
teous blossoms, yellow outside, and orange within.
See the sweet little Banksia climb still higher, and
fling its luxuriant wreaths even round the very chim¬
neys ; see the dark red China cluster round the cot¬
tage window, almost a sure token that content and
cleanliness are within.
Yes, roses must be pardoned for being double, since
their office is to be fragrant and beautiful, and while
their relations have improved their fruit for our taste,
they have improved their blossom for two of our other
senses, till the rose is owned as the queen of flowers.
The honest old round cabbage rose, solid, and with a
depth of healthy sweetness which invites you to plunge
your nose far into the deep pink cup ; the moss rose,
with the calyx crusted over with thick mossy hairs, so
as to form those surpassingly lovely buds ; the snowy
Provence rose ; the dark velvety damask ; these are
the oldest, and the best loved, though there are multi¬
tudes of new choice ones grown in costly gardens.
The Provence rose was first grown by King Rene,
Count of Provence, and father of our Queen Margaret
of Anjou, so that it seems as if our red-rose queen
ought to have changed colours with her enemies of the
white-rose party. The red-and- white striped York-
and-Lancaster rose, always puts us in mind of the end¬
ing of those bloody wars by the marriage of Henry
VII. and the Princess Elizabeth.
Henry VIII. used as his badge the York-and-Lan-
caster rose, which, whenever we see it carved in the
buildings of his time, always looks as square and broad-
faced as the king himself. The white rose, long after,
was worn by the Scottish Jacobites, as a token of the
hereditary right of the Stuarts.
The damask rose is properly the rose of Damascus,
34
THE IIEKB OF THE FIELD.
the most famous place in the world for roses, where the
perfume called u attar of roses” is made. At Shiraz,
in Persia, this scent is also distilled, and there you
may literally sleep on a bed of roses, whole rooms
being filled with the delicious petals. China is full of
roses, and it is the amusement of the Chinese gardeners
to dwarf their growth, so as to make them, flowers,
leaves, stem and all, so small that you would call them
doll’s flowers, and think them fit to put into a baby-
house.
The pink China rose, though not so pretty as its
sisters, blows so early and so late that it is valuable.
It is remarkable that all the northern roses have their
styles well protected with down, while all the southern
ones are bare, to suit their warmer climates. Though
Asia is full of roses, it is surprising that not one has
ever been found growing wild in America.
The beautiful fragrant and fruit-bearing tribe of
plants of which I have been speaking, are those, how¬
ever, which chiefly remind us of the curse of Adam,
since they are also the thorn-bearers. “ No rose with¬
out a thorn,” has often been remembered by those who
have scratched their fingers, or who have found pain
where they expected pleasure. But as joy often comes
out of grief, and happiness out of well-endured punish¬
ment, so even the chief of thorns, the bramble, the
most despised of plants, has fruit to yield us, the juicy
dewberry and shining blackberry. And very hand¬
some is a bramble-bush in Autumn adorned with its
fruit, the ripe so polished a black, the unripe so bright
a red. Who does not like blackberry picking 1
In the case of the bramble-blossom, if you venture
to gather it you will find the numerous cluster of germs
within the corolla. Each germ afterwards becomes a
THE APPLE AND THE ROSE.
35
single seed inclosed in dark purple fleshy pulp, and all sit
together on the receptacle which rises up in the middle of
them, like a Anger under a thimble, or a head in a cap.
The raspberry is a brother of the blackberry, and
is very like it, only the petals are hardly visible, and
the fruit is more juicy and larger. In America, when
a piece of ground is cleared by burning, the first thing
that comes up after the fire, is always a crop of wild
raspberries of delicious flavour.
What is here called the American raspberry is not,
however, very good to eat, and is only grown in shrub¬
beries for the sake of its large pink flowers, and hand¬
some leaves, which are much more agreeable than
those of the bramble, or raspberry bush, which have
the hooked thorns all along their main stem.
Last of all, we must give a word to the humble
strawberry blossom, with its white petals, and yellow
stamens. It likewise has many germs, which become
the little seeds on the outside of the fruit, the fruit
itself being in reality the enlarged receptacle which
has taken them up, off their feet, as it were, and raised
them on high. The calyx, and sometimes even a stray
petal, may be found below.
Hunting for wood-strawberries is pleasant work, and
so is the stringing them all in a row on a long piece of
grass, where they look like red-and-white beads, the
more unripe the better, as they are not quite so soft.
And eating them is very pleasant too on a hot sum¬
mer’s day. Certainly we have a great deal to thank
this trib^T for, and now we have dwelt upon it so long,
perhaps you will feel gratitude enough to it to remem¬
ber its long name, “ Icosandria,” or twenty stamens,
and mind that you do not confound it with its venom¬
ous neighbour, polyandria.
36
THE IIEP.B OF THE FIELD.
CHAPTER VI.
JULY FLOWERS.
BUTTERFLY FLOWERS.
Go into the kitchen -garden, and look at the rows of
peas, and tell me what you see there.
I see a number of pea-plants climbing on their sticks ;
there are peas upon them, some not quite filled out, and
some eaten by the birds, and there are some white
flowers still.
And what do you think those white flowers are most
like? I see something in the air looking very much
as if one of them had taken wing and flown away.
Ah ! it is a white butterfly ! Well, peas-blossom and
all its company are called Papilionaceous flowers, from
Papilio, which in Latin means butterfly ; but I am not
sure that I would not rather call them boat-flowers,
as you will see when we come to look into them.
These white peas-blossoms are rather too useful to
be gathered, so perhaps we had better go to the flower-
garden for their gayer, though less valuable sister, the
sweet-pea, a Sicilian lady, who has only come to live in
England within the last two hundred years.
She has but a weak, feeble, climbing stem, which
must lay hold of something; and to give it more breadth,
so that it may be firmer, it has a sort of long leaf grow¬
ing on to it at each side, which is called a wing. It
also has the power of putting out tendrils, or feelers,
which twist about spirally, that is to say, like a cork¬
screw, till they find something to lay hold of, and then
bind themselves on to it fast and firmly. Sometimes
BUTTERFLY FLOWERS.
37
two tendrils make a mistake, and get hold of each
other, and then they coil about and get marvellously
twisted.
The leaves are in pairs at the joints of the stem, the
blossoms, for the most part, grow singly on very slen¬
der footstalks, and there is good reason for the slender¬
ness of these stalks, as you will presently see.
Each bears a calyx of one leaf, ending in five points,
and if we strip off this calyx carefully, we shall see
that it contains live petals, each with a little foot to
fasten it to the receptacle.
The first of these petals is this handsome, deep crim¬
son one, which looks as if it had been folded in the
middle. And if you look at the bud, you will see that
so it really was, for this petal is doubled over the others
like a curtain, before the blossom opens. Its name is
the standard, because it stands up above the rest, and
shows its colours so boldly ; but it might also be called
the sail, for it answers the purpose of one ; the wind
blows it round, so that it always keeps its back to the
bad weather, and serves as a shield to the delicate
parts within.
Two long, narrow, purple petals project in front of
the standard, and bend towards each other, so as nearly
to meet ; these are the wings, folding together so as to
guard the innermost part. Within them is the little
boat itself, which is called the keel, and is greenish
white. Is it not beautifully shaped, the sharp ridge
along the bottom, with the little beak at the end for
the prow ? It is j ust such a boat as one might fancy
the king of the fairies floating along in by moonlight,
with his crimson velvet standard serving at once for
his flag and his sail.
And perhaps the queen of the fairies might sail by
38
THE HERB OP THE FIELD.
his side, in the pearly nautilus-like keel of the painted
lady-pea, with the pink standard unfurled to the wind.
However, while we are fancying all this, we are for¬
getting to see how our little boat is really manned, and
how rich a freight it bears.
Open it gently, and look into its narrow little hold.
Ah ! here is a fine store of gold-dust bursting out upon
our fingers ; it is a rich burthen, indeed, that these ten
merry men bear who are gathered so close round their
taller, fatter captain, with the one feather in his cap.
Very closely are the ten filaments gathered, so
closely indeed, that they are even united, so as to form
a regular sheath round the long thick germ of the
pistil. Nine of them are actually grown into one
piece, but the tenth is, as you may see, in a somewhat
advanced blossom, separate from the rest, so as to form
a kind of seam ; and the use of this is, that when the
germ has received the golden pollen and begins to
swell, this stamen may part from the rest, and open
the sheath, so that the pistil may have full room to
expand.
Could a more perfect contrivance be imagined, and
are not the wonders of the peas-blossom greater than
almost any others of which we have yet heard ? The
germ is, as you see, long and flat, and it is already
nearly of the same shape as the pod of a pea ; and as
to its contents, you know them probably quite as well
as I do.
All the papilionaceous flowers have legumes or pods
for fruit, and we have many valuable friends among
them. Scarlet runners, or French beans, are the nearest
at hand, with their beautiful red flowers, which are so
bright that they would surely be grown for show, even
if they were of no use. The ripe seeds of the scarlet
BUTTERFLY FLOWERS.
39
runner are beautiful things, shining black, mottled with
purple ; and I have sometimes seen a little child made
very happy with a long string of them threaded. They
are beautiful too when grown to their full size, but not
yet ripe, when they are of a rich purple crimson within
their green shell.
The fragrant bean-blossom has been long since over,
but I dare say you can recollect its striped standard,
and the fine black spots upon each of its wings ; and
its broad sturdy fruit is now just in perfection for eat¬
ing with its companion, bacon. Next year you must
go and watch the bees gathering honey from the bean
flowers. So well folded within the wings and standard
is the keel, that the bee cannot get in by the front, but
is obliged to pierce a little hole through all the different
folds, with its long trunk, before it can reach the juice.
Sometimes you may find every flower on a bean plant
thus pierced by the clever little gatherers of honey.
The broad bean is so large that it gives a very good
opportunity for seeing the commencement of the growth
of plants. You know it has a thick skin over it, which
when you pull it off, splits into two halves, only held
together by a little green and white hard thing, which
we call the eye.
When sown, the white part of the eye becomes the
root, the green part the stem, and afterwards the rest
of the plant, while the two large fleshy halves of the
bean itself appear above ground as cotyledons or seed
leaves, and gather nourishment till the young plant is
able to put out its own leaves, when they fall off and
die.
The earlier papilionaceous flowers are very beautiful ;
there is the graceful, drooping laburnum in the shrub¬
bery, of so pure and delicate a yellow, the pretty brown
40
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
pencilled mark on the standard ; but it does not exceed
in beauty the two wild yellow butterfly flowers. The
broom, raising its graceful spires of yellow blossoms on
its dark-green stems, seems to drink in the sunshine of
May, and reflect it back again in cheerfulness. It
grows in great quantities, and to an immense size, all
over the desolate moors of Brittany and Anjou, and it
must have been while hunting there that Geoffrey, the
father of our Henry II., used to gather it and wear it
in his cap, so that its French name of Genet became
part of the surname of our bold English kings. It is
said that they desired that their name of Plantagenet,
taken from so humble a plant, might put them in mind
not to exalt themselves too highly.
And we need not despise the useful household lessons
which are connected with this bright-faced plant and
its plain old English name ; for the good housewife
and her broom may do her duty, and be quite as
valuable in her way as the Plantagenet king who took
his name from the same bush ; and if the once green
boughs do their office in keeping the house cheerful,
and pure, and fresh, they well deserve to be honoured
by being worn in the helmet of the crowned prince
whose office it is to protect the safety and the purity of
that humble home.
Our other yellow butterfly flower is the prickly gorse
or furze, which wears its sweet-smelling golden mantle
in the spring, in such splendour that many a wild heath
becomes for a time a field of the cloth of gold, which
would have put King Harry the Eighth’s to shame,
even though his courtiers wore their whole year’s
income on their backs. England may be proud of its
gorse, for it grows in such beauty nowhere else ; and,
indeed, it is said, that when Linmeus, the Swede, and
BUTTERFLY FLOWERS.
41
the greatest naturalist that ever lived, first came to
England, and saw a common covered with furze, in full
blossom, he was so overcome that he fell down on his
knees in a rapture at the sight.
The small dwarf furze is still in blossom, and will
continue till the frost ; and there are, besides, all the
beautiful tribe of vetches and vetchlings, the tiny crim¬
son heath pea, the purple vetchling, making bowers
in the hedge, the yellow vetchling on the chalky bank,
the tiny little grey tare, and especially the small milk¬
wort, pink, blue, or white, with lovely little flowers, of
which the pink is perhaps the prettiest, as it generally
shows a large white tuft. It has but eight stamens
instead of ten, like a crest in its helmet. There is a
larger sort in America which is called by the pretty
name of May-wings.
The lupins, with their many-fingered spreading leaves
and tall spikes of blossom, ornament the garden, and
greenhouses generally contain the little dark lotus, said
to be the only black flower in existence ; but we have
a much prettier lotus of our own — the birds’-foot tre¬
foil — so called from its seed-pods spreading out from
one centre like the claws of a bird. Pretty little dwarf
thing ! it grows on sunny banks, and raises its red buds
and clusters of yellow flowers in the midst of soft green
moss, fragrant purple thyme, and striped eye-bright,
and is one of the brightest stitches in that unequalled
embroidery of the cushions of banks, on which it is so
pleasant to sit in the bright days of the latter end of
summer. It is sometimes called Lady’s-fingers, in
honour of the Blessed Virgin. A large lotus grows in
the Levant, and it was an old fancy that the lotus-
eater forgot all care, and was no longer subject to
sorrow or death. So the lotus stood for immortality,
42
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
and old painters sometimes put it into pictures of scenes
after the Resurrection.
The last to be mentioned among these flowers is the
clover, or trefoil, in all its many kinds. Its heads,
whether of the large purple, the white, the little yellow,
or the rich crimson, all consist of a multitude of small
papilionaceous flowers. How gay and beautiful they
are ! how bright a clover-field looks in the sun, and
how especially handsome is a great field of the new-
fashioned scarlet clover, which people have not yet left
off calling by the Latin name of Trifolium Incarnatum.
It is curious to find in an old gardening-book of fifty
years ago, that this scarlet clover had then been twice
introduced as a garden flower, but had been lost again,
whereas now it is to be seen everywhere, and in a few
years will, no doubt, be wild in all our hedges. This,
I have no doubt, was the case with the Lucerne, which
was brought here from the place of that name in Swit¬
zerland, as well as with the bright red saint-foin, the
name of which consists of two French words, signify-
ing “ holy hay.”
The strawberry-headed trefoil lias numerous short
pods, that form a globe, and cause its name. The
haresfoot trefoil has very long calyx teeth, that stand
out beyond the pods in an oblong cluster, rather like
the foot of a hare. But the subterraneous trefoil is the
strangest of all, for after the blossom is over, it buries
its pods while they form the seed, in fact, sows itself.
Trefoil means three leaves, and you may easily see
why it is so called. There is a beautiful story which
explains why the shamrock or trefoil is so honoured by
the Irish, and its leaves worn by them on St. Patrick’s
day.
St. Patrick was a bishop, who lived about the year
BUTTERFLY FLOWERS.
43
450, and who preached the Gospel in Ireland. It is
said that he found that the great difficulty in convert¬
ing the Irish was, that they would not believe, because
they could not understand, the great mystery of the
Doctrine of the Holy Trinity in Unity. At last he
gathered a shamrock or trefoil leaf from the ground,
and holding it up to them, asked if they could explain
to him how this could be but one leaf, and yet be three
separate leaves, and if they could not understand that,
and yet knew it to be true, how should they refuse to
believe what was so much greater, because their minds
could not reach so far as to understand it?
This argument convinced the Irish, and the three-fold
leaf has ever since been highly valued by them ; and
we often see it employed as an emblem in architecture.
The limbs of crosses are often made to end in trefoils ;
church windows are sometimes in the same form, and
it is a shape frequently chosen for carved foliage.
So we see how in every plant God has set lessons of
His Name and Nature for those who will look for them.
I have read of a poor man in Brittany, who was told
by a wicked irffidel revolutionary soldier, “ We will
throw down your churches ; you shall have nothing to
remind you of your superstition,” which was what
these unhappy men called the Christian religion.
“ You cannot take away the stars,” answered the
Breton, meaning that while he had them, he must
still be for ever reminded of Him who made the stars.
And so even with the smallest herb that grows ; not
only has their Maker created them so perfect and so
lovely that we can hardly help recollecting how great,
how kind, and how wise lie is every time we look at
them, but He has also set upon them His seal, so that
we may trace out in them emblems of His Nature as
44
THE IIEIIB OF THE FIELD.
revealed to us, wliich come to us as sweet lessons and
helps, and might serve to support our faith, even if our
other aids were far away.
CHAPTER VII.
AUGUST FLOWERS.
TJIE LAST BELLS OF SUMMER.
The bright flush of summer is fast fading away, and
though the heat is not gone, yet all the first gay bloom
is past, and the time is come which is compared to
middle life, when man’s first hopes and early promises
are fading, but when they should have begun to bring
forth fruit, fruit which may not always ripen here, but
will assuredly do so hereafter in the soil of which we
are inheritors.
But if the spring buds, the early delights, and per¬
haps the friends, of youth and childhood, have passed
away, yet neither the year, nor the life of man, is left
to be lonely and cheerless. Many a new bright young
friend, many a quiet pleasure unknown before, many a
happy and peaceful duty arise ere yet the earlier ones
are gone, and early autumn has her garland of sweet
flowers, the bells which brighten the last hours of sum¬
mer, and, as the Germans say, ring its knell.
Yes, the bells are ringing summer’s knell every¬
where. The real bell flowers, the Campanulas,* be¬
gan a month ago to unfold their delicate blue bells.
Wherever we go, we meet them, all five-stamened,
pentagonal, drooping flowers, of a particularly delicate
texture. They have one pistil with a graceful three-
* Campanula, a little bell.
TIIE LAST BELLS OF SUMMER.
45
cleft branched stigma, and a very hairy style. The
little hairs are useful to brush the pollen out of the
anthers, as the style passes through them in lengthen¬
ing, and thus this fertilizing dust finds its way to the
stigma. The seed-vessel is a curious five-cleft purse,
which splits open in the middle of each division, in¬
stead of at the sides.
Peals of these Campanula bells are nodding on their
tall stalks everywhere, the Canterbury bells in the
garden, the nettle-leaved bell flower in the hedges of
the south, and the tall pale blue giant bell flower in
the north ; the moor rings its ivy-leaved bells, so small
and close to the ground ; the chalk-pit has its rich,
dark blue clustered bell flower ; and the stubble, in
some fortunate places, is ornamented with a Cam¬
panula so beautiful, that it has the name of Venus’s
looking-glass, since even the fabled goddess of beauty
herself could not see anything so pretty as this in her
own mirror ; but surely if we could but hear them,
the sweetest and softest tones of all must be rung out
by the single bells of the dear little delicate harebell,
nodding on its slim tender stalk, looking so frail that
we should fancy no care could be too great to rear
such an elegant thing. Yet it will bloom on through
all the autumn, in the coldest and most exposed situa¬
tions, brightening the waste with its modest beauty,
and never leaving us till the first frost has come to
nip it. So fond are the Scots of this pretty flower that
decks their bleak mountains and moors, that it seems
to them, wherever they see it, a symbol of home, and
it has the name of u the blue bells of Scotland.”
Other bells are ringing round it on the common,
especially the heather bells, which I could fancy would
make a sharp, quick, tinkling sound, just fit for a
46
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
fairy’s dinner-bell ; indeed, what with their stiff hard
leaves, and dry chaffy corolla, you may almost ring
them yourself’.
The heaths have eight stamens, with purple anthers
in two divisions opening like the prongs of a fork, and
one pistil, the germ of which contains multitudinous
little winged seeds, so small that they are not easily
seen.
You will be surprised to hear that this small scram¬
bling plant is a very good geographer, and has a par¬
ticular dislike to Asia, though one would have thought
it might be like the Russian empire, and not be par¬
ticular whether it was all in one quarter of the world ;
but no, the heath is a steady European, and though it
grows in quantities all over the western side of the
Ural mountains, not one piece ever spreads to the
eastern side, or is found in any part of the whole
Asiatic continent. There are plenty of African and
American heaths, however, and very beautiful they
are, with splendid large red, yellow, or white bells,
and dark thready stamens. However, England may
be well contented with her own three sorts of heather,
or more properly five sorts, but two of them will not
come out of Cornwall — why, I cannot tell.
The three are, the large cross-leaved heath, with all
its pale blush-coloured bells in one cluster ; the purple
heath, branching for ever, and scrambling all over the
common ; and the ling, spiring up in such graceful
branching forms, sometimes tall slender spikes, some¬
times round garlands, sometimes little lilac trees, all so
indescribably lovely, that it is difficult to leave off
gathering when once you begin.
These tiny heaths make more show in the wmrld
than much larger and handsomer flowers, putting us in
THE LAST BELLS OF SUMMER.
47
mind that the whole Church, and the whole nation,
take their colour more from the multitude of the lowly
and humble members, than from the great and noted.
It is the purple heath that gives the rich tint to the
distant landscape, giving mountains and moors far away
a fine glowing hue, through the blue haze of distance.
And they are very valuable for the common uses of life,
as well as beautiful to look on. A bed of fresh heather
is said to be most delicious from its elastic springiness ;
the dry woody stalks are bound up in bundles for burn¬
ing, and a heath broom is a very useful article.
But now we will leave the heathy common, with its
free air, and the delightful springiness beneath our feet,
which seems as if we could walk there for ever with¬
out being tired, and look at one or two more eight-
stamened flowers, which are in their glory now. There
are the willow herbs, the tall French willow herb,
with its curiously-cut petals, and red calyx, and spires of
blossom, and the English willow herb, better known as
“ codlings and cream,” which opens its fine red blos¬
soms by the river side, the white stigma within divided
into four, and opening like another little flower. There
are three or four poor little pale willow herbs besides,
which do not look as if they were of the same family
as these fine handsome flowers, but, like them, have
very beautiful seeds, each furnished with a very long
graceful feather of white silk with which to fly away
to seek their moist nursery.
The parts of willow herbs are all in fours ; four
petals, four divisions of the calyx, four seeds, twice
four stamens ; and so it is with the bright-coloured yet
grave bell that is ringing in all gardens, almost in
all houses, and taking its part in the last chimes of
summer.
48
THE HERB OE THE FIELD.
The fuchsia I mean, with its deep red calyx, and
the fine violet petals rolled round the long stamens,
one of the most richly coloured of flowers. It grows
wild in Mexico, where its crimson flowers hang down
from very large bushes, high up on the wild volcanic
hills. The first that was ever brought to England was
a present from a sailor to his old mother, who lived in
some small street in London, and kept it in a flower¬
pot in her window. Much must the old woman have
delighted in watching the unfolding of the long crimson
drops into the drooping blossoms, so unlike all that
she had ever seen before, and putting her in mind how
her son had remembered her and thought of her in
lands so far away over the broad sea. But she was
not the only person who admired the flowers, though
no one could have loved them so much ; a lady stopped,
at the sight of what was so beautiful and uncommon,
looked at the blossoms and heard their story. She
went to a great gardener to try to find this new plant
there, and described it to him, but he had not seen
one, nor ever heard of such a flower. lie asked the
direction to the old woman, went to her, and offered
half a guinea, one guinea, two guineas, for the beau¬
tiful plant, but still the mother would not part with it
till he had promised her that the first young plant he
could raise should be hers. He took it home, pulled
off every blossom, cut it up into slips, and put them into
a forcing-frame, where they quickly grew and flourished.
And soon fuchsia-plants at two guineas a-piece were in
the grandest drawing-rooms in London, but the most
prized of all was that which came back to the old
mother. She had her share of the profits too, and
when the sailor-son came home from his next voyage,
he found that his present had provided for the com-
THE LAST BELLS OF SUMMER.
49
fort of her old age, as well as cheered her in his
absence.
This was a long time ago, and the fuchsia thus ob¬
tained is now called “the old-fashioned fuchsia,” and
not often found except in the gardens of old houses ; it
is rather larger and more delicate than those we usually
see, which are, for the most part, seedlings.
There are several large new sorts, but they have
in general lost their grace while becoming larger, and
their colours are not so good and deep as those of the
smaller and hardier ones. I suppose it is an acknow¬
ledgment of the beauty of the fuchsia, that it is a very
favourite shape for ornaments, such as brooches, pins,
&c., which, however, only serve to show us how mise¬
rable and clumsy are man’s best imitations of the
wonderful works of God. How well 1 remember days
when it was our delight to keep shops in the garden
— grocers, dressmakers, jewellers, &c. — with flowers,
leaves, and grass, to represent the goods. We all
wanted to have fuchsias in our shops, because they
were so pretty, and I think we used them very ill, for
they were ear-rings at the jeweller’s, and artificial
flowers at the milliner’s, and at last our little tailor
decided, “ that they were a very curious sort of
trowsers.”
In the south of England, the foxglove peals of
bells have in general ceased to ring before the 1st of
August. The foxglove, the special fairy flower, called
in Ireland fairy-cap, and where the little elves are
said to hide themselves, when a human foot approaches
to disturb their evening dances, and I believe the
English name is properly f'olks’-gloves, the fairy folks.
Beautiful foxgloves ! the purple bells hanging in pro¬
fusion on their tall proud stalks, growing in whole
4
50
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
multitudes on the sunny dry bank, or lifting tall spires
among the grey dark ruined walls ! how fair and bright
they are ! and yet it is almost sad to greet them, for
they first come to tell us of the decay of summer.
They are loved by little children too for the loud
popping noise made by enclosing the air within them,
and then cracking them, for which reason they are apt
to call them poppies, though this is a silly name, and
does not belong to them.
The foxglove is one of the largest of a numerous
tribe of flowTers, called Labiate or lipped, and there¬
fore its parts should be examined closely. Its corolla
is of one petal, with a narrow throat fastened into a
five-cleft calyx, there is one pistil divided at the top,
and a large round germ. The stamens are four, two
long and two short, and it is this which is the chief
distinction of the tribe.
Those of the foxglove are bent in the middle ; the
outside of the corolla is purple ; the anthers are of a
very pretty bright delicate yellow, spotted with dark
brown ; the throat of the flower is shaded with white,
and speckled with dark red spots, sometimes bordered
with white rings, with long downy hairs growing out
of the spots ; the pistil is deep purple ; the calyx and
leaves are of a soft light green, and altogether there
are few English plants so handsome.
Another of the tribe is the snapdragon, "with its odd
red and yellow, or white and yellow mouth, within the
close-shut lips of which may be seen the two long and
two short stamens, and the pistil like a tongue, and
plenty of honey, too, after which the bees creep into
the little box, shut themselves in, and then come back¬
wards out, all over yellow pollen. The great snap¬
dragon grows on the old town or castle wall, which
THE LAST BELLS OF SUMMER.
51
once saw battles and sieges ; its relations are humbler,
the small ones live in dry fields ; the tall yellow toad¬
flax, with its sulphur-coloured upper lip and orange-
coloured lower one, and its long tail, abides in dry
hedges ; the ivy -leaved lilac toad-flax clothes the bare
rock, and the brown and yellow sort creeps in the
fallow-field.
The beautiful blue skull-cap grows by the water-side,
its seed-vessel is really like a skull, and that of the
garden monkey-flower is not unlike a monkey’s face.
The musk, with its strong scent, is the smallest of this
family of monkey-flowers, it is very necessary to say,
or one might be in the case of the gentleman who sent
to Brazil for all the sorts of monkey-flowers his friend
could obtain, but unfortunately made the important
blunder of leaving out the word flowers, and, in con¬
sequence, received a whole ship-load of chattering,
grinning monkeys, from the American woods, with a
message that there were a few scarce ones to follow by
the next opportunity. Gardens possess, too, the tall,
long, red penstemon, with five stamens indeed, but one
only a mock one, for it never carries an anther.
All these have a large high seed-vessel, but there is a
second division of the labiate flowers, which have only
four naked brown seeds at the bottom of the calyx.
To this tribe belong the herbs which have the strongest
scent, the lavender and rosemary, basil and marjoram.
The sage, which has but two stamens, branched how¬
ever so as to carry four anthers, is one of this tribe, with
all the other Salvias, less useful, but far handsomer,
scarlet, blue, and crimson, and the wild clary of the
woods. Nor must we forget thyme, sweet thyme, both
wild and tame, beloved by bees, the delicious beds of
which are so soft, and send forth such a fragrant smell
52
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
when trodden on ; the basil thyme, too, in the fallow -
field, deep blue, with a pretty white crescent on its
lower lip. Almost all of this tribe have a strong scent,
and are often very useful. There is the white and the
red archangel or dead-nettle, so named from their nettle¬
shaped leaves, and with so sweet a drop of honey at the
bottom of their throat. The purple prunella or self-
heal, called by country children Lady’s Slipper, and the
creeping ground-ivy, all used to be very highly valued
when doctors were few, and the chief mediciners of the
villages were “cullers of simples,” whose knowledge
of herbs had been handed down by tradition without
books from many ages past.
Many fatal mistakes these poor old people must have
made, and very thankful we may be that all the bene¬
fits of good and superior care have come amongst us,
more easily obtained by the poorest now, than then by
the richest and greatest.
This is a long chapter, and so I shall leave you to
find out more about labiate flowers, and summer bells,
in the best way possible, by your own eyes and obser¬
vation.
CHAPTER VIII.
SEPTEMBER FLOWERS.
COMPOUND FLOWERS.
You have learnt by this time that there can be no
perfect flower without stamens and pistils, and that no
double flowers are ever found growing wild, excepting
now and then by what people are pleased to call a freak
of nature.
However, here is a puzzle for you : no one can doubt
COMPOUND FLOWERS.
53
that dandelions and thistles are wild, since no one ever
takes the trouble to grow them ; and thistle down and
dandelion clocks will not allow us to doubt that they
both produce as much seed as, and more too, than any
one wants or wishes. Moreover, where are the stamens
and pistils of a daisy ?
I think you must be in a difficulty ; and now I will
surprise you still more by telling you that the daisy and
dandelion have in reality more stamens and pistils than
any flower with which you have yet been made ac¬
quainted.
If you have a large kitchen-garden, and if the gar¬
dener ever lets his artichokes run to seed, you will
there have the best opportunity of seeing the structure
of flowers of this class ; since the parts are so large as
to be easily examined without a magnifying-glass. I
have a great admiration for an artichoke flower, with
its crown of blue petals, and pale lilac styles, of such an
exquisite light bright colour ; it rises up so nobly in the
autumnal garden, and if gathered, and brought into the
house, often puzzles people who would never think of
seeing such a handsome thing come out of a kitchen-
garden.
If you can get an artichoke blossom, look at it closely,
and pull it to pieces, as well as its very strong, hard
calyx will allow you, and you will find that it is, in
fact, one great head, consisting of a multitude of small
flowers, closely packed together on the same receptacle,
within the same calyx. Each floret, or little flower,
consists, you see, of one petal deeply cut. Within is
one pistil, very long and slender; the five stamens are
much shorter and smaller, and their anthers are united
round the style, just as in the violet and heart’s-ease.
All these heads of small florets are called together
54
THE IIEIIB OF THE FIELD.
Compound Flowers ; and there are a great many dif¬
ferent species, many of which come into blossom late in
the year, and are now ornamenting our gardens and
fields.
The calyx of most of these is composed of small
leaves, laid one over the other like tiles, or scales
imbricated, as this is properly called. You may see
this in the artichoke, though here each scale is very
large, thick, and fleshy, at the place where it is set into
the receptacle. So you see it is the bud of the artichoke
blossom which is sent up to table ; the “ arti,” as a
little boy I knew used to call the eatable part, is the
receptacle, and the choke consists of the young florets.
The Jerusalem artichoke is also a compound flower,
though it is not related to the common artichoke, except¬
ing that its root has a taste supposed to resemble that of
its namesake. In both its names this vegetable seems
to have made a great blunder, for it has really nothing
to do with Jerusalem, and the word is only a corruption
of the Italian girar sole , turn to the sun, it being really
a species of sunflower.
Both sunflowers and Jerusalem artichokes were first
found in Peru, where they were held in high esteem
by the natives, who considered them sacred to the sun,
and wore their blossoms in their hair at all their great
festivals.
In sunflowers much of the structure of compound
flowers may easily be seen, as the florets are all of a
large size ; all those in the centre, or as it is sometimes
called, the disk, perfect and regular flowers, 'with five
united stamens and one pistil ; but the large yellow
ones on the outside, which at first sight might have
been taken as the only petals, have, in fact, one petal,
grown to a great size, and no stamens at all. These
COMPOUND FLOWERS.
55
are called the strap-shaped florets, and serve the same
purpose as the corolla in simple flowers, namely, to
protect the more perfect and regular ones which pro¬
duce the seed.
Each seed of the sunflower kind is of a dark-brown
or grey, all firmly set within the calyx ; and in the
case of that glorious old-fashioned flower, the large
sunflower, the great circular receptacle puts me in mind
of a round shield. Turkeys and poultry greatly like the
oily seeds of the large sunflower, and the whole plant is
very handsome, standing up high in the garden of some
cottage, or farm-house, with its great broad golden
blossoms, as bright with their yellow rays as if they
wished to grow into the likeness of the sun, at which
they are always looking.
For solid as is the stalk of this flower, it always turns
towards the sun through his whole course. At sunrise,
the blossoms are each one of them turned to the east ;
by noon-day their bright faces are steadfastly turned to
the south ; the parting rays of the western sun still play
upon the broad disk of the constant sunflower ; and ere
the morning light has dawned, it has set its face to
watch for the eastern glow. It is one of the brightest,
clearest lessons written in God’s great book of nature ;
for is it not thus that the Christian, through the morning,
noon-day, and even-tide of his life, earnestly looks up
to the Sun of Righteousness in heaven, till he is trans¬
formed in His likeness, and when at length night comes
upon him, is he not laid down to sleep, with his face
towards the east, watching for the dawning of the
brightest day ?
The daisy, the bright day’s eye, is a little sunflower
in its own humble, quiet way, and when the sun is out
of sight, it folds its pink-and-white strap-shaped florets
56
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
over its yellow eye, bends its head, and sleeps amid tlie
dewy grass. All its perfect florets are not in blossom
together ; those at the edge come out first, and the
centre ones not till the strap-shaped outer florets are
often much the worse for wear. When you make a
daisy-chain you thrust the needle and thread through
the receptacle, or disk, and the centre florets. How
very grand this sounds ! You think, and so do I, that
it is much pleasanter to make a capital long daisy-chain
than to talk about it in such fine words. Daisy-chains
are country children’s strings of pearls, the pearls of the
meadow, as we may call them, for the very same word,
Margarita , signifies at once a daisy and a pearl ; and
if any little Margarets read this chapter, perhaps they
will remember to have been sometimes called pearls, or
sometime daisies.
St. Margaret of Cortona is always drawn with a
daisy in her hand, or growing near her, and in honour
of her, a daisy was the device of Margaret, St. Louis’s
queen, as well as of our own bold, high-spirited Queen
Margaret of Anjou, who does not seem to have had a
right to anything so meek and lowly. There is a
beautiful book of hers in the British Museum, given to
her by the great Lord Talbot, with the first page orna¬
mented with a rich border of daisies. A double daisy
is one in which the strap-shaped florets have been
multiplied till they exclude the perfect ones in the disk ;
they are often very pretty, when they are of bright
crimson or snowy white ; and where is the child that
is not proud of that funny thing, a hen-and-cliicken
daisy, in the border of a little garden bed.
The next flowers of which daisies remind us are the
great bold-looking ox-eye daisies of the early spring,
with their clear white and bright yellow. They are
COMPOUND FLOWERS.
0/
not, however, real daisies, but with their yellow brother,
the corn-ox-eye, are chrysanthemums, of the same
genus as the red, white, and yellow double flowers
which linger on in the garden till the first frost. The
Chinese play fine tricks with their chrysanthemums,
clipping and training them to grow in the shape of
horses, deer, and sometimes even Pagodas.
Nor must we quite pass September without a kindly
remembrance of the sober Michaelmas- daisy, with its
grey border and smiling eye, coming to stay with us
through the autumn as long as ever the frost will
allow it.
And there, too, are the noble flowers called dahlias,
which were first brought, small and single, from
Mexico, where they were called cocoxoclutl , and truly
they have improved their name as much as their beauty
since their arrival in England. A single dahlia is
seldom seen, and it is not very handsome ; the double
ones are certainly very fine, dark velvety puce, rich
crimson and scarlet, white and lilac, regularly and
exquisitely marked, and each floret quilled and folded
with perfect regularity. They are some of the flowers
on which gardeners most pride themselves.
But we must come back to our own hedges and
ditches, where we find the strong-scented camomile
flowTer, so useful in medicine, the lilac flea-bane, the
tall golden-rod, all autumn flowers ; moreover, the rude
rough rag-weed, yellow, bold, and staring, and with its
jagged leaves, usually devoured by swarms of yellow
and black caterpillars, their yellow parts of exactly the
same hue as the flowers.
All these are of the same description as the daisy
and sunflower, with a disk of perfect flowers, and a ray
of strap-shaped florets. Such also is the groundsel,
58
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
though it has no ray, the very troublesome groundsel,
regarded with kindness by none save the little gar¬
deners who want a weed to pull up, or by those who
have a caged canary to rejoice with twisting it into
the bars of its cage. That inveterate groundsel, which
will come up everywhere, is the strongest of all emblems
of the ill weeds that have grown apace in the soil of
our heart ever since that, as well as the ground, was
made a soil to be cultivated with care and severe toil,
before it will bring forth aught but what is worthless.
The American groundsel is a pretty purple flower with
a ray, and is much grown in gardens.
There is another odd-looking flower belonging to
this order ; the small brown cud-weed, with the white
cottony leaves, which grows in the stubble fields in the
autumn. This cud- weed has, lioivever, some very
pretty brothers ; the everlasting flowers, the calyx of
which, consisting of a number of small, stiff, chaffy
leaves, is not liable to fade, but both the yellow and
white kinds can be kept for a long time in some dry
place as a winter nosegay. I have some on my mantel¬
piece which were given me by a little school girl more
than two years ago. Sometimes we see them in wreaths
in gardeners’ shops, dyed of different colours, in red
and blue. There is a large fine red sort too, and a
large yellow one, the last of which we often see in
gardens. These amaranths, or everlasting flowers,
though stiff, and not very graceful in themselves, are
considered as the emblems of the never-fading flowers
beyond the grave ; and in France and Germany it is
the custom to lay garlands of them on the coffin, and
often to hang fresh wreaths of them upon the graves
of those who have passed into the other world.
Next we come to such flowers as, like the real arti-
COMPOUND FLOWERS.
59
choke, are composed entirely of equal and perfect
florets. First of these is the thistle, the cursed thistle,
as one sort is called, the plant which, together with the
bramble, grows everywhere to remind man of his
doom. And yet the thistle is a noble and beautiful
flower, with its purple florets, its calyx of firm solid
scales lapping over one another, and each ending in
such a long, sharp, piercing dagger, besides the nume¬
rous lesser spines which bristle up at every point, like
an army of spears around the soft rich purple cushion
within. Every leaf too has its own spines ; every
joint of the stalk is well guarded, and it well deserves
the motto which the Scots have given at once to it and
to their kingdom — “No one can provoke me with im¬
punity.”
The thistle, with its purple cap and coronet of spines,
has long been the badge of Scotland ; the reason why
is not known, though it seems to me that long ago I
read a story of a Dane at the head of an invading army,
who stealing in secret, barefooted, to attack the Scottish
camp in the night, suddenly trod upon a thistle, and
by his cry of surprise and pain, put the Scots on their
guard, so that the attempt at surprising them failed.
But I have never been able to find the story again, and
am sometimes inclined to believe I must have dreamt
it. At any rate the gallant King James V. instituted
the order of Knights of the Thistle, and this common
way-side plant was the chosen device of the house of
Stuart.
If you choose to venture your fingers in pulling a
thistle to pieces, you will find the tiny purple florets
with five stamens and one pistil each, and each little
pistil has a long, narrow, silky "white cotton wing
fastened to its germ. As the flower fades, these cotton
GO
TIIE HERB OF THE FIELD.
wings grow larger ; they fill the calyx till it seems as
if it was a white silk thistle instead of a purple one, then
they puff out into a handsome soft head, and at last
they take flight, and these full-spread white wings go
floating hither and thither on the autumn wind till at
last they become fixed, and grow and multiply, alas !
far too like bad habits, lightly caught and fast fixed,
and too soon full of spines and thorns.
Luckily goldfinches eat a good many of these mis¬
chievous downy seeds, or I do not know what would
become of us. I have seen the whole air so full of
thistle down as to look as if it was snowing, for the
sluggard cannot allow the thistle to grow in his own
field without damaging that of his neighbour. The
great milk thistle, with the green leaves variegated
with white, is the prettiest of all ; there is also the
dwarf stemless thistle, which looks beautiful on the
chalk down, and its companion the brown one, equally
small, and looking as if it was a dead flower.
The great hardworking dumbledores love to hum
over the thistles, and rest on the purple tuft, which
makes a royal cushion for those black velvet and
orange coloured, burly, portly creatures.
If thistles are like bad habits, so too are the burdocks,
which stick so fast and hold so tight, that it seems im¬
possible to get rid of them, as each scale of the calyx
has a little sharp-pointed hook at the end. I remember
once a little village boy in his play stuck his jacket
over with these burs to look like the long rows of but¬
tons on a page’s jacket ; I have always wondered how
long he was getting them out again.
Dandelions are of the same kind, with perfect florets,
and winged pistils, which make such beautiful globes,
that children so love to blow away and call clocks,
COMPOUND FLOWERS.
61
fancying the number of puffs will give that of the hour.
Or in our shops I have known them serve as mops.
The curious milky juice which stains the fingers of
those who make dandelion chains, is of use in medi¬
cine, and the root is sometimes ground up and mixed
with coffee for people in weak health. The chains,
formed by joining the two ends of the hollow stem, are
very pretty things, and what pride to make them reach
all round the garden ! By the way, the name of the
flower does not mean a conceited lion, as might have
been supposed, it is only a corruption of the French
name dent de lion , a lion’s tooth, from the jagged edge
of the petals. The dandelion has many likenesses
among the sowthistles and the pretty brimstone-coloured
hawk-weeds, one of which makes a still prettier round
puffed head than the dandelion clock itself.
Though this chapter has been far too long, I must not
leave off without giving one or two words to the last
order of compound flowers, to which belong the lovely
blue corn-flowers, and the hard sturdy knap-weed.
These have their perfect florets in the middle, but their
imperfect florets, instead of spreading out in rays, are
really little flowers of exquisite form, only without the
important parts.
The knap-weed is in full blossom now in all waste
places ; it has a beautiful imbricated calyx, fitting to¬
gether with admirable closeness, like a suit of armour,
each scale edged with a border of little brown hairs.
It is a purple flower, with a tough stem, very hard to
gather.
Last of all the deep blue corn-flower, with its pretty
head among the wheat, and its diadem of imperfect
flowers. In Germany the children of the villages
sometimes wear wreaths of this beautiful flower as
62
TIIE llEltB OF THE FIELD.
crowns round their flaxen heads, when all the people
of the place go according to the good old custom, to
offer up their thanks in Church for their safely-gathered
crops.
To conclude, there are three different classes of com¬
pound flowers ; first, those which, like the dandelion,
have all their florets equal and perfect ; secondly, those
which, like the daisy, have a ray of imperfect flowers,
and a disk of perfect ones ; thirdly, those which, like
the knap-weed, have no ray, but a border of imperfect
flowers.
CHAPTER IX.
OCTOBER PLANTS.
UNSEEN BLOSSOMS.
I was thinking what I could find to tell you about
flowers, or rather about the vegetable world, in Octo¬
ber, which to one half of the globe is the season of
decay, and when the bright tints worn by the woods are
only the beauty of decline, like the gay colouring of
sunset. The trees do indeed wear “ a sunshine of their
own,” but it is like the crown of glory on the head of
the aged man.
I was thinking, I say, what could be said about the
vegetable world in October, when I recollected a story
told of one of the most learned men who ever lived.
He was sitting one day upon an open common, when lie
laid down his hand upon a piece of turf, and said that
in that small space which he thus covered, there grew
so many wonders that their study would occupy the
UNSEEN BLOSSOMS.
Go
longest life of the greatest philosopher. So I do not
think we need despair of finding something marvellous,
even though the time of primroses and violets has
gone by.
Pray what do you consider to be the colour of a
brick wall ? Bed, to be sure ; all red together. And
a tiled roof? Why, that is red too, only darker. Or a
stone wall ? That is grey, or reddish, or white, accord¬
ing to the colour of the stone. What can make you
ask us such foolish questions ? And the bricks are all
alike, I suppose ? O yes, exactly, not a bit of differ¬
ence between them.
Well, there is a row of houses, all built at the same
time, all with one door, and two windows down stairs,
and three up stairs, all with slated roofs and chimneys,
exactly the same. But do they all look just alike ?
Let us see. Here is one with neat white muslin blind
and white curtain peeping out, and the door set open
with a bar up against it, and a scrambling baby in a pink
frock, leaning out over, making its funny little noises
at the people passing by. And the next ? Here is a
window 'with no comfortable curtains, but with great
cracks, and dirty-looking bundles squeezed close up
against it, as if the house was full of disorder, and at
the open door you may see a child with tangled hair,
and a frock of one washed-out colour, dragging a poor
little baby ill-temperedly about. Or here is another,
very trim indeed, with bright scarlet geraniums making
a blind to the down-stairs windows, and wooden boxes
of mignionette before the upper ones. The next looks
blank and dull, and see, “ To be let,” is stuck up in
the window. Here we have another, where the panes
are very bright, and behind them there stand up
oranges and curiously-cut pieces of parliament ginger-
04
TIIE HERB OF THE FIELD.
bread ; and in this one the upper window is open, but
the curtains are drawn close, and there is a hush in
the manner in which that young girl is lifting the
latch of the door. There is sickness there, or perhaps
it may be death. All that row of houses were alike
when they were built, but are they alike now 1 How
full of living souls are they, and all with their own
joys, their own griefs, their own sins and struggles, all
unknown to us, though they are our brethren and
members of the same Body, but all known perfectly
and thoroughly to the Father of us all !
And if we know nothing of what is so like and so
near to ourselves, how should we know anything of
the hidden things of nature and of providence? They
seem put there to show us how dim our eyes are, and
remind us that a time may come when we shall see
more clearly.
Now for the brick wall, the red wall, only it must
not be a spick-and-span new wall, any more than the
houses are quite new. The houses must get their in¬
habitants, and so must the bricks.
Well, look close at the bricks, and say whether they
are all alike, or whether they are red. To begin.
First here is a cloudy sort of splotch of grey, shaded
off into edges of silvery white, which looks quite pure
and bright against the little dark-brown bristles that
rise in front of it ; then comes another cloud, but this
is yellow instead of white, and what a funny shape it
is, something like China and Ilindostan in the map,
with two or three little yellow islands round it.
The brick, its neighbour, is gayer still, for the
yellow is in broader streaks, and the white rises in
curious little shields or crests. Besides, there is a
crack in the brick, upon which there rises a small
UNSEEN BLOSSOMS.
65
found tuft of exquisite dark soft green, like a cushion.
And see here, how the yellow, brown, and white, are
all blended in one pattern, like the veining of marble.
No one can say that one brick is exactly like another
when they come to look into them, any more than that
there is no difference between houses.
This strange painting on bricks and stones is one of
the least understood and most curious things in crea¬
tion ; for when I have told you that these grey and
yellow clouds are lichens, you know nothing more
than their name, and I have very little more to tell
you. Great microscopes, and minds which are micro¬
scopes in comparison with ours, have been set to work
on these little things, and can only make out enough
to be sure that there are still greater wonders yet to
be discovered. They have not, indeed, leaves, stem,
and blossom, like the larger vegetables, but it is not
less true that they are living, growing, seed-producing
plants.
As to seeing the seed, or even the parts that contain
it, that is quite impossible without a very powerful
magnifier. The parts containing it are very minute
purses, usually ranged under the raised edge of the
yellow crust, or under the white shield. Each bag is
full of little cells, and each cell is filled with seeds so
small that not only the eye cannot see them, but the
touch cannot discover them, and yet they have life
within them, life which wants nothing but moisture to
make it grow, and lay the foundation for further and
better developed life.
Floating about in the air, these imperceptible seeds
settle on stone, on wood, on the bark of trees, wherever
they can find a cranny, a cranny that is large enough
5
GG
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
for them, not what our eye or even our touch would
call a cranny.
What they come to, a good deal depends upon the
substance upon which they grow, for the bounds be¬
tween the different species have not been clearly made
out. These grey-and-white ones are called liverworts ;
there are, besides, the grey crusty ones, which give the
hoary appearance to the bark of the old oak tree, and
the long grey branching one that hangs down stiff and
crackling from the boughs, a sort of winter foliage ; its
purses are in little globes at the end of each branch, and
it is properly called lungwort. It is the liverwort and
the lungwort that are so useful to the little birds in
building their nests ; the neat goldfinch and chaffinch
work them in with moss, and hair, and gossamer cob¬
webs, like little felt-makers, and the clever, long-tailed
tit covers her dome-shaped nursery with them, so as to
make it so like in colour to the grey branches round,
that it may have a good chance of escaping the view
of the thievish mouse and magpie, or still more thievish
birds’ -nesting boy.
In the midst of the heath grows a wiry, white-
branched lichen, the same which in Lapland is called
reindeer moss, and which those useful creatures dig out
far beneath the snow. If you are very fortunate you
may perhaps find the beautiful cup-liclien, which raises
among its crisp grey curling leaves a little cup like a
fairy’s wine-glass, edged with crimson spots. Or there
is an odd brownisli-grey one with branches and a mar¬
bled pattern, which the Canadians call tripe de roche,
and which served Sir John Franklin and his com¬
panions for food in their great distress during their
journey of discovery in North America.
I said the lichens prepared the way for other vegeta-
UNSEEN BLOSSOMS.
67
tion, and it is by tlieir decay they become a sort of
mould, into which mosses and all the mushroom tribe
may insert their tiny roots. The brown bristles upon
our bricks are the beginning of moss, and the green
tuft is a collection of small plants of moss, each per¬
fectly arranged, like the plants of larger organization.
See, each little moss plant has a number of exquisite
thready green leaves, spreading out round its taper
thread of a stem, like the perfect model of a lily plant ;
but the stem, instead of ending in blossoms, has a sort
of brown cap or purse at the summit, sometimes round,
sometimes peaked, sometimes brown, and sometimes
green. Under this cap is a purse, with invisible seeds.
The cap either splits at the side or falls off. and every¬
where do these seeds grow in beds, containing myriads
of tiny perfect moss trees at the root of the oak or the
beech, in the crannies between tile and tile, along the
borders of neglected walks, on the sides of rocks,
wherever they can find the modicum of nourishment
which they need for their little spark of life.
Though mosses are so common, people have been
content to call all the kinds moss, without finding Eng¬
lish names for the different sorts ; but perhaps you will
think it as well to be able to tell one from the other, so
I will mention one or two Latin names.
There is one graceful, soft, bright light-green kind,
like a fern leaf, twice pinnate, and its shape too elegant
to describe, growing on banks and under the roots of
trees, the moss we chiefly delight in, and can pull out
in soft springy handfuls, for the making of moss-
baskets, the packing of flowers, or for the filling of
“ beau-pots,” with snowdrops and hepaticas reposing on
the green bed. What a fresh smell comes with it, of
pure earth, as we pull it out from the great green
G8
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
cushion where it grows, and where we could hardly
make a hole, pull away as much as we will ! I rather
think this mos3 is that most in esteem for lining the
cradle of the wren and hedge-sparrow, though they
don’t call it by the name I must give you for it — the
proliferous Hypnum , proliferous, because it grows in
such quantities. Its long thread-like stalks wear a
pointed night-cap, like that of the Elscolcliia , like its
splitting at the side when it falls of. Another which
creeps in long, scaly, light-green lines about the roots
of trees, is the meadow Hypnum, and its likeness grow¬
ing on walls, the silken Hypnum .
The Bryurn moss is not creeping like the Hypnum ,
but rather in little separate jrlants, growing as close
together as possible, as thick as they can stick.
I have just pulled a little tuft off a brick in the
churchyard wall, so small I could hardly cany it home,
and yet containing no less than eleven perfect plants,
their brown stalks as slender as a fly’s leg, supporting
little green urns, covered by long-pointed caps, nearly
half off, and clusters of the smallest green leaves imagi¬
nable round the root. All this I have seen without a
glass, and so may you any day. I believe this is the
bearded Bryum , but I will not make sure. One of
these morsels of plants grows in quantities all over the
Avails of Jerusalem, and some have thought it might be
the plant meant when avc hear Solomon spoke of herbs
from the hyssop that groweth out of the wall up to the
cedar of Lebanon. The swan’s-neck Bryum is dark
green, groAvingin bogs ; a dark moist plant it is, with
more root than usual Avith mosses, bringing up quanti¬
ties of Avet mud AAuth it ; and generally where you see
it looking smooth and cushiony, is the most quaking
place. The swan’s-neck wants so little soil that it
UNSEEN BLOSSOMS.
69
covers tlie loosest of all the mud ; and if you set your
foot on it, a splash, and a leg painted with black peat,
is sure to be the consequence. I fancy the green scaly
moss of our woods is another Bryum , but I am not
sure.
Club-mosses also grow in bogs ; they crawl about in
long imbricated stems, that is, stems made of leaves
fitting one into the other, and have their capsules in
large round brown heads at the end of the stems. They
are called fox-tails, and always put me in mind of the
fresh air of mountains. These, like the swan’s-neck,
prepare the way for the turning wet marsh into firm
ground, for they begin to bind it, and make it less
watery, and in time fit to bear more useful plants.
The unseen blossoms seem meant to prepare the way
for others — the lichens.
The lichen is the last vestige of vegetable life, and
also the first. Even in the arctic regions it contrives
to grow upon the snow, and to cover it with a field of
dazzling crimson, which has often amazed the northern
traveller ; it is the first upon the rock, the first to find
out that man’s hand is neglecting the constant rubbing
and care that alone can keep off’ these most snbtile and
minute of created things. On the lichen feeds the
moss ; in the soft damp nests formed by decaying moss,
other seeds germinate ; the chickweed, the tiny speed¬
well, the stone-crop, insert their roots, and find nourish¬
ment, till nature, or rather nature’s Master, has brought
life out of death, beauty and vigour out of rottenness
and decay.
Nay, perhaps to speak more truly, it is flesh alone
that really corrupts ; in the vegetable world, which
partakes not equally of our doom of sin, decay is not
so much real decay as a change of life. Before the
70
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
last leaves have died away on the aged oak, the rotten
wood lias become a whole garden of green flourishing
plants, gathering round it, embracing it, and rendering
its last years as lovely, though not perhaps as noble, as
its prime.
CHAPTER X.
NOVEMBER PLANTS.
FERNS.
We must still keep to the flowerless plants, and there
are many of them which are exceedingly beautiful and
full of interest.
First of these are the ferns, pretty green waving
plants, which seem to be all leaf and nothing else ; but
these leaves, as they are commonly called, have not the
same properties as those of the plants whose scructure
is visible, and botanists therefore named them fronds.
Look under some high hedge or sheltered bank, and
there you will find a profusion of long dark-green
shining leaves, of a very firm leathery texture, and
with tough black stalks. This is the fern called hart’s-
tongue, and it is at this time in full blossom, if the
brown seed-cases which it possesses may be called
blossoms.
See here, on the under side of the leaf, or frond, are
a number of pale, brown, raised ridges, ranged with the
utmost regularity along the veins of the frond, a long
one and a short one alternately, and the brown colour
contrasting very prettily with the green of the leaf.
These brown ridges are cases ; after a time they swell
FERNS.
71
and burst, disclosing a number of very tiny round
grains, which, perhaps, you might think were the seeds ;
but no such thing, they are only the purses that the
seeds are in, and if we could look at them with such
magnifying eyes as the dragon-fly wears, we should see
that they are shaped a good deal like an ancient hel¬
met, and that they contain a multitude of seeds smaller
and finer than dust. If you want a multiplication sum,
you may find out how many seeds one liart’s-tongue
plant might bear in a year, reckoning each purse to
contain fifty seeds, each ridge four thousand five hun¬
dred purses, each frond eighty ridges, and each root to
produce twelve fronds ! I only wonder what becomes
of all that do not grow, and why the world is not one
wood of hart’s-tongue.
So small are the seeds, that gathering them is a pro¬
verb for what is impossible ; and, as we tell little chil¬
dren, that if they can put salt on a bird’s tail they can
catch it, so it is another saying, that by gathering fern
seed you may make yourself invisible, both being what
nobody has ever done.
The scaly hart’s-tongue grows on old walls ; its
fronds are small and short, thickly covered with brown
scales at the back, and of a curious zigzag form. They
shrivel up to nothing without moisture, but spread out,
broad and polished, as soon as a shower has refreshed
them.
The handsomest kind of English fern is the tall
flowering fern, which our Saxon ancestors named Os¬
mond, after one of the titles of Thor, their god of thun¬
der. Perhaps it raised its high, firm, royal-looking
fronds round his rude stone altars, out far away on
the moorland wastes, for it is chiefly found growing on
the damp, boggy, stony moors, which seem to act like
72
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
sponges, to catch the water of the clouds, and disperse
it in streams and rivers from among the hills.
Though it is called the flowering fern, the brown,
granular appearance which forms a spike at the top of
the frond, is not really the blossom ; it is only formed
by the edges of the leaflets being curled in, over the
almost invisible ridge of purses.
In the gnarled heads of old pollards, in crevices of
stone walls, or on the sides of quarries, you may often
see the polypody, its green frond deeply divided into
leaflets, the centre of those on one side coming just
opposite to the division of those on the other. Here
the purses are collected together in little round golden
dots, ranged regularly along the back of the leaflets.
I like the polypody, in spite of its ugly, half Greek,
half English name, which means many feet. It is one
of those cheerful, humble things, that seems to have a
kindness for what is venerable and excellent, even in
decay. It hangs round the aged hollow tree, and
feathers up the broken arch of the ruined chapel,
through autumn and winter, just as we should cheer¬
fully, though soberly, hold fast to the old bulwarks of
our faith, and of our law, and do our best to adorn
them by our adherence, though some may tell us that
their bright summer day is gone and past, and there
are only winter storms to come.
Another fern which loves to deck the ruined wall, and
which I first learnt to know among the old tombstones in
the churchyard, is the black maiden-hair, a pretty little
plant, its stalk jet black, and tough as wire, the round
leaflets arranged in pairs, with clusters of little black
purses in round dots upon their backs. The roots, too,
are very hard and black, and squeeze in perfectly hat,
between stones and bricks, in the most determined way.
FERNS.
73
The black spleenwort, and rue-leafed spleenwort,
are also often to be found with fronds of a very pretty
shape, and the blossom spread over the back in elegant
patterns.
Another kind, the sea spleenwort, grows in hollows
of rocks, refreshed by the sea-breeze ; but the most
elegant of all the race of spleenwort is the queen of
ferns, the exquisite lady-fern. Her frond is tall and
slender, delicately green, and beautifully cut into little
scalloped and pointed side-wings, with brown spots of
fruit at the back. My Lady-Fern is too choice and
elegant to be very common ; her bower is usually the
shady, rocky, woodland glen, under old gnarled trees,
and by the side of rushing streams ; and so tender is
she, that it is nearly impossible to gather and carry her
home without her withering.
“ Where the copsewood is the greenest,
Where the fountains glisten slieenest,
Where the morning dew lies longest.
There the lady-fern grows strongest.”
Worthy to be handmaids to this dainty lady, are the
far more common, though scarcely less graceful, shield-
ferns, so called, because they have a tiny brown shield,
which shuts over the assemblage of small helmets, in
their multitudinous little dots of blossom. In early
spring we see them on the sides of dry banks, or under
hedges, pushing up their fronds, doubled in half, folded
up tight, and covered with brown hair, looking like
some rough caterpillar. As they grow on, the fronds,
with their lower part unfolded, and the upper rolled up
in a graceful spiral line, put us in mind of a shepherd’s
crook, or still more of a bishop’s pastoral staff. And
when they unfold, how beautiful they are ! That long,
gracefully swelling, bending, tapering, plumy form, like
74
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
the feather in some royal cap of state, so fair in the
outline of the whole, and still lovelier when examined
closely, little plumes parting out on each side of the
stalk, and each of these bearing such beautifully-cut
little leaflets, so regular in their irregularity, each with
one lobe pointed and another swelling, and a little
sharp peak at the end of each. No one that has not
tried can tell the pleasure there is in searching out the
beauty of forms of one piece of shield-fern ; and though
all have this general character, yet they are so infi¬
nitely varied, that you will hardly find three plants
which have their leaflets exactly of the same shape.
One is only inclined to ask, “ How can things be so
beautiful ?” And look at the whole plant, with some
fronds standing up straight, some bending over and
showing the little brown specks of fructification, the
shepherd’s crooks unfolding themselves, and the rough
caterpillars round the root, all spreading out on some
sweet, shady, spring bank, and perhaps feathering over
a bunch of primroses or of violets. Yes, honour to the
shield-fern, in its quiet hedgerow nest, with the glow¬
worm sheltering under its wavy bower, and the robin
and linnet nestling in the long grass behind its screen ; it
is one of those beauteous things that most aid to make
spring fair and lovely, and yet are least regarded.
Honour, too, to the brake or bracken in its woodland
or moorland haunt, spreading its wings like branched
fronds on their tall stems, the covert where the timid
fawn lies watching for its mother, and where the grey
rabbit sits with its broad ears and large eyes turned
heedfully about to watch for the first token of danger.
It is difficult to find the seed-bearing part of the brake,
as it is not, as usual, in dots at the back of the frond ;
but the margin of the leaf is turned over like a hem,
FEKNS.
75
and tlie purses are packed safely away under this pro¬
tecting edge. Its Latin name means the eagle-fern,
perhaps because it is like the outspread wing of an
eagle ; but it is also said to be because, cut the stalk in
two where you will, you may always find a dark mark
in the shape of a spread-eagle, or as some say, of an
oak tree.
It grows to a great height in damp, woody places, but
is short and small on open commons, and as it turns
brown early in the year, before the heather and dwarf-
furze are in blossom, its brown tints blend with their
purple and yellow, and give a beautiful colouring to the
sides of mountains. I remember once seeing one of the
hills on the north coast of Somersetshire, early in Au-
gust, in the full glow of the heath and furze blossom,
contrasting and mixing with the brown brake, and with
a rainbow standing across it, so that the colours of the
hill, seen through the rainbow tints, were indescribably
beautiful, and like nothing I have ever seen, except
those many-coloured specimens of copper ore, called by
collectors, peacock ores.
The bracken is the most useful of all the British
ferns. It is used as litter for cattle, and as its ashes
contain a good deal of potash, they are used in making
glass. In the forest of Deane, these ashes are rolled
up in balls with clay, and serve for home-made soap.
There is a very curious autumn fern called bleclmum,
or hard-fern, which has two sorts of fronds, one bear¬
ing blossom, the other, as far as we can see, useless.
It grows in the same kind of places as the hart’s-tongue.
The barren leaves are broad, and only moderately
scolloped at the edges, the fertile ones, the very skele¬
tons of leaves, almost all the green cut away, look¬
ing as if it had been eaten by caterpillars, tall, thin,
7G
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
starved, and curly, both together very much like the
monsters that little boys sometimes draw on their slates
to represent Englishman and Frenchmen, one all
breadth, and strength, and solidity, the other tapered
and cut away to nothing.
The adder’s-tongue has its fertile parts also on a
separate leaf, which is long and narrow ; but this grows
in wet, boggy places, and is not very common, so that
I doubt whether you will be able to find it.
The rock-brake, or mountain-parsley, is a very
pretty kind, which grows on the grey stone walls on
the Cumberland and Westmoreland hills. The barren
leaves are very elegantly cut, like parsley, and the fer¬
tile ones small, and covered at the back with a pattern
of pale brown.
The best place for seeing ferns is in rocky woods,
near streams ; for though they do grow in hedgerows
and woods, in more fertile places, it is by no means as
well, or as luxuriantly. Their proper home is on the
rugged side of some steep bank of rock, nodding over
some clear, dashing mountain stream, which keeps
them ever damp with its spray, hanging almost into
the waterfall, and clinging to huge bare stones which
the foot of man has never trod. High up, the hart’s-
tongue stretches out its tall clusters of dark shining
leaves, contrasting with the sober rock ; on the bank,
the osmond raises its high and royal head. The poly¬
pody and the little black maiden-hair creep about in
the crevices of the ivy and moss-grown stones, while
between them, and in all their clefts and crannies, the
lady-fern, and all her shield-bearing attendants, are
feathering themselves up in the pride of their beauty,
rejoicing in the pure fresh air, and delicious shade.
It is a strange and solemn thought, that there is so
FERNS.
77
much wondrous beauty in this world that man neither
sees nor regards. It makes us wonder whether the
angels see it, and marvel at our carelessness of the fair
gifts which have been bestowed on us.
On the opposite side of the world, ferns are more
important than they are here. The fern root is the
chief food of the native of New Zealand, and in South
America they are actual trees, hardly to be distin¬
guished in the appearance of their foliage from palm
trees themselves ; but these wonderful tree-ferns seem
peculiar to that strange half of the world, where every¬
thing is contrary to what we see it here.
Yet ferns and mosses, and those odd creeping things,
club-mosses, which we find in peaty bogs, have done
wonders for us here, and things which we can by no
means understand.
Peat, as those see for themselves who are used to a
peat fire, who have helped to pile up the stacks to dry,
and who think a wood or coal fire far less agreeable,
consists of decayed moss and other vegetable matter,
apparently matted and pressed together. So it is in
the great Irish bogs, which the people love so well, that
they say that the finest country looks lone and cold
without a bit of a bog in it.
Far down, this peat is black and hard, and it is be¬
lieved by geologists, that from having been subjected
to very hard pressure, as well as to the action of fire,
it has in the course of thousands of years become coal !
There is a marvellous notion ! but what makes it seem to
be true, and what indeed probably put it into the heads
of these searchers into the hidden things of the earth,
is, that it is not uncommon to find impressed upon the
surface of a piece of coal the exact form of a fern leaf,
or of a piece of some large moss, like the print of a
78
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
seal. I remember when I used to have a great desire
to find one of these fern-leaf pieces, and being once
caught in the coal-hole in the midst of a search ; but I
never found one, and I would not recommend you to
follow my example, as I believe the colliers always pick
out these pieces and sell them as curiosities ; but if ever
you meet with a collection of minerals, you will proba¬
bly see one of these curious impressions.
What makes it still more wonderful is, that the ferns
are not such as grow in England, but are of the large
handsome kinds which are now only seen growing in
tropical countries, so that it is thought this part of the
globe must once have been much hotter than at pre¬
sent. Or rather, we may perceive how very little we
know about the matter at all, and that every fresh
thing we learn is but like a window opening to show
an immense field far beyond, in every direction, which
we can never explore thoroughly.
“ Canst thou by searching find out God?” Search¬
ing to the utmost will not enable us to find out the
nearest of His works ; and yet He, the Maker of all,
lias made us know more of Himself than all our search¬
ing can find out respecting one of the golden dots on a
fern leaf.
CHAPTER XI.
DECEMBER FLOWERS.
CHRISTMAS EVERGREENS.
December is come, and Advent with it, warning us to
look forward to Christmas, with all its mixture of solemn
thoughts, and of joyful ones, of seriousness and mirth.
And as the animal world had its share in the joy of
the first Christmas season, when the ox and the ass
CHRISTMAS EVERGREENS.
79
welcomed their Maker as their Guest in their cavern -
ed stable, when He first was despised and rejected of
men ; so the vegetable world of creation lias had its
invitation to join with Christians in the bright
greetings of His coming, year by year. “ The glory of
Lebanon shall come unto Me, the fir-tree, the pine-
tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of
My sanctuary, and I will make the place of My feet
glorious.”
Many a tree does its part in making the sanctuary
glorious with carved work ; the cedar in southern
countries, and the oak in our own, have especially this
honour ; but this is with their solid wood, the beam
and the timber. In the southern hemisphere, where
of course the same Christmas as ours is kept, but where
the 25th of December is a long, bright summer’s
day, like what St. John Baptist’s is here, there are
wreaths of gay flowers to dress the churches, and in
flowery Mexico, the whole space round the altar is a
very wood of fragrant orange trees and roses.
We so prize and love our plant of sacred joy, that
its winter title is Christmas, and at all times it is known
as holly, or holy, a little altered, just as holy day has
become changed into holiday. For its proper name is
holm, and some people make the distinction of calling
that holm which has no berries.
Who does not know the pleasure of setting out on
Christmas-Eve with knife and basket, to bring home
the bright prickly boughs, the choosing and picking,
the jumping and climbing for the best pieces, with the
thickest necklaces of coral beads wound round and
round them ? But mind one thing on this merry ex¬
pedition, do not break and tear the trees, do as you
would if their master was looking at you ; for remember
so
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
it is no way of doing God honour to take what is not
lawfully permitted.
What pleasure in carrying it home ! admiring at
every step the thick clustered berries, and the dark
glossy leaves, so pinched up and tapered off into their
strong solid spines ; what pleasure in showing it to
mother, and in sticking it wherever it will go, over the
fire-place, everywhere about the dresser, and espe¬
cially in the window, to peep out, and, as it were, to
say to every passer ly, “ Christmas ! Christmas is
come !” Is it not a Christmas carol in itself ?
Then there is the taking it to school, and hoping
that the mistress has not had more brought to her
already than will cover all the bonnet pegs. Where
the bonnets are to go, nobody knows or cares just at
present, places for holly are all that is wanted. Then
there is the sending it into the next town for some
sister, or cousin, or aunt, who cannot get any holly for
herself, and would hardly know Christmas without it.
And perhaps some children who read this chapter may
have a greater pleasure still ; perhaps they may have
been chosen to help in the solemn work of beautifying
the place of the sanctuary, of dressing the church with
the beautiful green boughs. Highly-honoured children,
take care, remember that this is work fit for angels, and
that those who share in it should be as like angels as
they may, while still divelling upon earth.
You, too, who are not called on to take part in this
work, remember that you in your own places may still
be beautifying the sanctuary, growing up as the young
plants, and bearing fruits of righteousness, fit for the
holy trees which the Lord hath planted in His own
garden, to form His crown of rejoicing at the last day.
Those thorns and red berries have a very solemn
CHRISTMAS EVERGREENS.
81
meaning, for they are to remind us of our blessed
Lord’s Crown of Thorns, and of the thick, heavy drops
of precious Blood that He shed for our sake ; for had
not those drops been poured out, Christmas would have
had no joy or mirth for us. They must remind us, too,
as I said before, of the fruits which are required from
us. of the suffering that comes before glory, and of the
hedge of thorns and pricks which meets the sinful man.
Noble tree, how many deep lessons, and how much of
cheerfulness has our Maker implanted in it !
One more lesson still, for you may observe in an old
holly bush, growing in a good damp soil, never clipped,
and not liable to be eaten by cattle, that the leaves,
especially near the top, cease to arm themselves with
prickles, and only have one sharp dart at the point.
So if we have any sharpness or evil tempers in our
youth, we must, as we grow older and nearer heaven,
smooth them gradually away,
“Till the smooth temper of our age should be
Like the high leaves upon the holly tree.”
The holly tree blossoms about May, and has a small
white flower in clusters round the little boughs, with
four stamens and four pistils, very short, and all joined
together. These four pistils become four seeds, each
with a separate cell, within the scarlet jacket of the
berry. A young holly plant is very pretty when it
first comes up, with a very small brown leaf on each
side of the little stem, with all their little spears stand¬
ing boldly out on all sides, still too soft to prick at all.
Sometimes holly is found with yellow berries, and
sometimes the leaves are variegated, with a white
trimming all round the leaf. These are prettiest at
the time of the midsummer shoot, when the young
white leaves are quite pink. Or there is a variegated
6
82
THE HERB OF TnE FIELD.
sort in shrubberies, with the whole surface of the leaf
bristling with little spines like a sea-porcupine.
After all, none of these new fashions are equal to the
noble old holly tree, rising up with the dark green
leaves so proudly in the midst of the heathy wood,
casting such a shade around, and affording such a
shelter close to the trunk. Or a tall, clipped holly
hedge, a very wall for closeness, far higher than gar¬
den wall ever was built, and giving one a notion of
breadth, firmness, shelter, and resoluteness in defend¬
ing its master’s property.
The most famous holly hedge that ever existed was
at Says Court, the house of Mr. Evelyn, a very ex¬
cellent man, who lived in the time of Charles II., and
who delighted in trees with all his heart. Ilis hedge
had a great misfortune ; for when the Emperor Peter
the Great of Russia came to England to learn ship¬
building, Mr. Evelyn was desired to lend him his house
at Says Court, and Peter, who had not learnt in his own
country to take much care of other people’s property,
not only put the house in great disorder and spoilt the
furniture, but chose for his favourite amusement, to
be driven in a wheelbarrow through the midst of the
famous holly hedge. I wonder why he could have
chosen such a sport ! Perhaps it was for the sake of
mischief, or perhaps it put him in mind of storming a
town, for I am sure it must have been almost as dis¬
agreeable. People will do things for play, at which
they would grumble finely if they were obliged to do
them.
The holly tree has kept us a long time, and we must
go on to its companion evergreens. I believe the
reason evergreens do not lose their leaves in autumn
is, that the sap does not cease to flow into the foot-
CHRISTMAS EVERGREENS.
83
stalks till the next summer, after the young leaves have
budded forth, so that the stems are never left quite
bare. You may observe, too, how thick and leathery
is the texture of the holly leaf ; so thick, that the ribs
are hardly visible, but seem covered with a double
case, the dark green upper skin, and the pale green
lining. The ribs, though they appear so little, are
very firm and strong, and survive all the rest of the
leaf, as does the hard horny border which edges the
leaf, and forms the spines. You may see the form
in the skeletons of last year’s leaves, under the holly
tree.
Mistletoe, curious thing, is the next companion of
holly. As to its name, that is a difficult question.
Missel is said to mean to soil, and the plant to be so
called because its berries soil the claws of the missel-
thrushes ; but then, on the other hand, those learned
in birds, say that the thrush is so called because it soils
its toes with the berries ; and so I suppose the mistle¬
toe and misselthrushes must settle as they can which is
the original owner of the name.
Mistletoe has come to a Christian use at last, though
everyone who has read a page of English history knows
what a part it used to play in the old days of the
Druids. I daresay you are tired of the old story of the
Arclidruid climbing up the oak tree with his golden
knife, and the others catching the mistletoe in the white
cloth below. The chief wonder is, where they found
it on an oak tree, for in all England in these days there
is only one piece known to be so growing. Did they
use it all up, or was it only its rarity that made it so
precious ?
In our days it grows on thorns and apple trees,
serving them instead of their own leaves in winter, on
84
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
poplars and limes, and on many other kinds of trees.
It roots itself in their branches, and feeds on their sap,
instead of drawing its own from the earth. Plants
growing in this manner are called parasites. It has a
bushy stem, often forked, of the same pale, yellowish
green, or greenish yellow, as the round hard leaves.
The blossoms are of the same colour, and the stamens
and pistils not only grow in different flowers, but on
different plants ; some plants having four stamens in
each of their blossoms, and others two pistils in each
of theirs. This explains why some pieces of mistletoe
have no berries, since, as you know, stamens can never
become seeds. The berries are white, about the size
of a currant, and contain two seeds, in the midst of a
quantity of very sticky pulp.
In some places the beautiful fruit of the skewer-
wood, or spindle-tree, is used with the holly and
mistletoe. It is extremely pretty, consisting of five
round, pink purses, all joined together in the middle,
and with a cleft in the centre of each side, which
opens and shows a seed, enclosed in a brilliant, dark
orange, wrinkled skin, contrasting with the bright pink
outside. Though pink and orange certainly would
look frightful together in our bad imitated painting,
yet in nature’s oivn exquisite colouring, nothing can
be more lovely. The blossom is nothing like so pretty
as the fruit, it is small and green, and belongs to the
great order of pentagon flowers, as, indeed, might be
guessed from the five-cleft form of its beautiful purses.
The leaf is not evergreen, and has, long ago, departed ;
the wood is very hard, and is used for spindles and
skewers.
Now for ivy, graceful ivy, with its dark green leaves,
of such multitudes of different forms. Only try to
CHRISTMAS EVERGREENS.
85
find two plants with their leaves alike. Some have
three points, some again five, spreading out like fin¬
gers ; some even seven, with perhaps a little excres¬
cence on each side, close to the stalk, as if it wanted to
grow out into two more ; some have obtuse angles,
and a broad space of leaf ; others have long-pointed
lingers, cut away into peaks, flounced and furbelowed
here and there. If the ivy plant is sick, or has got
into poor ground, it does not wither and pine, not it,
but it paints its face gayer than ever, and comes out
in some new freak, either with bright red leaves and
yellow veins, or with yellow leaves and red veins ;
not a pining green and yellow melancholy, but all
glowing and gay, as if resolved to put a good face on
the matter, and not own that it is uncomfortable. It
is just in the same way that it tries to persuade the
trees that they are leafy and green, instead of being
old and dry. and dead. It is a pleasant thing to make
a collection of ivy leaves of different forms. A cheer¬
ful thing it is, winter and summer all alike, catching
the light on its dark glistening leaves, so that they
glance like a stream of white sunshine all down the
trunk of the tree.
In every shady place the ivy will grow ; the beech
tree is the only one which does not foster it. It
creeps along the ground, stretching out long green
feelers, with tender little leaves, till it finds a tree or
a wall to fasten itself upon. Its fastenings are very
curious ; they are little, soft, short fibres, like a cater¬
pillar’s feet, or like a short, rough beard. They are
not roots, for the ivy has its own root in the ground,
and lives on its own resources, instead of sucking the
sap of the tree, though perhaps they may imbibe the
moisture of the rain and dew. As the ivy grows
86
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
older, the lower stems become actually wood, bark
without and yellow solid wood within, sometimes grow¬
ing so large that boxes, and even a small work-table,
have been made of them. These large woody stems
generally cease to have fibres, though I have seen one so
thickly overgrown with them, close, rough, and brown,
that it looked like some shaggy animal climbing up the
tree. It is the creeping clinging shoots that bear the
curiously-lobed leaves, which never have any blossoms.
It is not till they have reached the top of the wall, or
the large branches of the tree, and have established
a good hold on them, that they begin to throw out
branches, bending downwards, without beards, and
with leaves heart-shaped or round instead of peaked
and fingered, only resembling the lower ones in the
dark colour, solid texture, and the numerous principal
veins all rising at once from the long footstalk.
At the end of these upper branches there form,
towards the autumn, round heads of blossoms, each
upon a little green stalk, with a tiny calyx of five
black teeth, supporting five small, green, spreading
petals, within which grow five stamens, surrounding
a round yellow germ, which bears a short style and
no stigma.
As the blossom of the ivy does not come out till
October, the black berries are hardly ripe till after
Christmas ; they hang on for a long time, and are the
great store-house of the birds in the spring, when all
the autumn berries are gone.
This bushy, tangled, blossoming, round-leaved part
of the ivy is indeed precious to the birds, for it is
their winter dwelling-house as well as their granary.
Hear what a chirping and scolding of sparrows pro¬
ceeds from it, as if all the rogues were chattering at
CHRISTMAS EVERGREENS.
87
once, like a set of idle children ; and here they come,
tumbling out, flapping their wings, rolling about in the
air, screaming and chattering, far too angry to think
where they are going, till suddenly they find them¬
selves falling, they put their wings to the right use,
perch on some tree, cock up their tails, give a sell-
satisfied twitter, and there is an end of the quarrel.
How often the blackbird comes rushing out, in a
terrible flight, giving a loud screaming twit, twit, twit,
just as if for the sake, foolish fellow, of telling where
his nest, with the green muddy-looking eggs, is to be
found ! What a notion of snugness, and dignified great
eyes, perfectly at home, is conveyed by the saying,
“ an owl in an ivy bush !” And how many children
are there who do not love the very brown back of that
charming book which begins, “In a hole, which time
had made in a wall, covered with ivy, a pair of red¬
breasts had built their nest,” and who look at every
ivied wall as the home of Robin, Dicky, Flapsy, and
Pecksy ?
Old ruins are the especial place for ivy, which hangs
over the wall, trying to shroud and cheer its decay,
stretching its delicate young shoots gracefully along
the shafts and columns, as if to cover them with those
exquisite mouldings and forms of nature, which put to
shame the best that man can accomplish.
Another of our pretty Christmas berries is the knee-
holm, or butcher’s-broom, a low plant which grows on
heaths. It has a dark, green -branched stem, bearing
a number of egg-shaped evergreen leaves, each ter¬
minating in a very sharp prickle. On these leaves are
perched the very small green blossoms, stemless, and
sitting on the leaves. Some plants have three-stamened
flowers; other flowers with a single pistil, which by
88
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
the winter becomes a large round berry, of a beautiful
waxen-looking red, sitting in great dignity on its dark
pointed leaf.
CHAPTER XII.
JANUARY PLANTS.
NEEDLE TREES.
Here we come to our walls and ramparts. I do not
mean the wooden walls of old England, but the ram¬
parts of the whole world, against a very sharp-cutting
enemy, who wears a beautiful thick white sparkling
coat, brings with him a quantity of sharp little spears
and diamond weapons, and perhaps this very New
Year’s Day may be driving pins and needles into your
fingers and toes, and pinching your nose till it is fast
turning into a purple button, to say nothing of heaving
carrots and turnips out of the ground with fairy levers,
of splitting lumps of chalk into flakes, and of spreading
a marble surface over the pond.
Ah ! you know now that I mean the gentleman
whom the ancients used to call Boreas, or north wind,
but whom we know by the less grand and more homely
name of Jack Frost.
After all, we hardly like to call Jack Frost an
enemy, when he comes so pleasantly to clear away the
dark heavy mist, clean up the muddy roads, brighten
everything, spread his beautiful tracery on the window-
pane, and make such delightful slides on all the pools.
Yes, he is a pleasant visitor for well-clotlied, healthy,
NEEDLE TREES.
89
active people ; but that is, thanks to these ramparts,
these guards which I spoke of, who let no more of his
battalions come through them than is good for us, but
stand boldly up to keep him out with a close phalanx
of spear points as sharp as his own.
Between the rest of the world, and Jack Frost’s
domains, whether in his own especial kingdom, the
North Pole, or in his scattered fortresses, the moun¬
tain tops, where he has reigned alone since the begin¬
ning of the world, there stands a whole army of war¬
riors, their tall, straight, lofty heads, pointing up to the
sky, their many arms bending round on all sides, and
bearing more spears, and spikes, and daggers, than
even the hundred-armed giant we hear of in old fables.
Countless are those tall, slender guards, in their
garments of dark green and silver ; bold, honest, and
true they are, scarce bending their heads to many a
fierce wild attack and storm of their besieger, General
Frost ; and though not exactly “ each stepping where
his comrade stood,” yet if one does crash and give way
beneath some sudden blast or some lightning bolt,
holding him up and supporting him for years upon
years on their strong faithful arms, even perhaps till
his sons have grown old enough to take his place in
the ranks.
They bear the whole weight of the tremendous
avalanche of the Swiss mountain, and by their mul¬
titude and firmness, stop it from descending upon the
village, and crushing house and inhabitant beneath it ;
and they may well guard the house, for they them¬
selves have a large share in its building. Nay, even
though cut down, and carried far from their native
homes, they guard our thresholds and support our
roofs still.
90
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Has t-liis been a long riddle, and have you not found
out who these brave defenders are ? Well, I will help
you to their name. At their head there is the stately
and highly-honoured cedar ; the Chilian sentinels, who
wear scaly green armour, are called Araucaria Imbri-
cata, or Puzzle Monkey, because even the monkeys
cannot climb them, so cased are they in pointed scales.
The main body of warriors in America, Norway, and
Switzerland, are the pines, and where we see them in
comparatively fewer numbers, where they are less
needed, we call them firs. It is said that at Florence,
where these shields from the cold blasts of the Appe-
nines have been cut down, it has become so much
colder, that many tender plants have ceased to grow
there.
We have very little idea, from such as we see here,
whether singly or in plantations, of what the real grena¬
dier guards are — the great pine-forests of America and
Norway, with their dark depths and solemn stillness ;
indeed, we are so far removed from the enemy’s borders,
that Providence has not made one pine native to Eng¬
land, and there is only one British sort, namely, the
Scottish pine, which is usually called a fir.
However, we see enough of them in plantations to
perceive how beautifully they are constructed for their
object. Look at the spruce fir, the commonest kind, a
Norwegian species, and see its tall spiring head, grow¬
ing by straight shoots, one perpendicular, the others
perhaps three in number, spreading out in different
directions, all slight, and with their dark neeclle-leaves
following their direction, and keeping to them, close
and snug, so as to afford no opportunity to the wind to
get hold of them and tear them off. You may tell a
fir from a pine by the leaves ; those of the fir grow out
NEEDLE TREES.
91
singly, while those of the pine have little bundles of
long points, all springing from one point.
If the fir or pine was not evergreen, it would not so
keep back the forces of winter ; if its leaves were
broader, like those of the laurel, they would flutter in
the wind and be torn off ; if its head was not tapering,
so as to be yielding towards the top, it could never
bear the force of the storm, but would break short off.
Therefore each successive year, as it puts out the one
upper shoot, it strengthens all those that groAv beneath
it, and each tier of branches also put out a star of
shoots at their extremities, so that it is thicker and
stronger in the lower part.
It is likely, too, that these lower branches will have
a considerable weight of snow to bear, since they do
not let it fall through them like the leafless boughs of
deciduous shrubs. Therefore — but this you can only
see in a very large fir tree, such as we do not often
find here — they grow in a graceful bending form,
sweeping down from the main stem, spreading out
backs ridged like the roof of a house, and arched to
give them strength to bear the snow, and always taper¬
ing downwards so as to let it gradually fall off, and
thus avoiding the being crushed under it. The wood,
too, is extremely hard in these branches, as any car¬
penter or woodman will tell you, and yet such is the
weight of these long sweeping boughs, that compara¬
tively a slight blow on the upper part, near the trunk,
will snap them off.
The fir tree, too, takes considerable care of its seeds,
since they have to grow up in such inclement places.
Its blossoms are maturing from the autumn in little
round scaly buds, which old Evelyn calls “ their winter
lodge.” In summer these buds expand, the barren
92
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
ones into a sort of catkin covered with very yellow
pollen, the fertile into a little delicate soft fir-cone,
consisting of a succession of scales, fitting beautifully
one into the other ; and wedged into the very bottom
of these scales, are two very small seeds, they can
hardly be called pistils, as they have no style, and
scarcely any stigma. The scales only open themselves
for a little while, just to let in the pollen ; as soon as
that is done they shut themselves close up again, like
a box, over the little seeds, and there the cones hang
on the under side of the branch in pairs, firm, com¬
pact things, a fortification in themselves, each scale
serving to guard not only its own charge of twin seeds,
but those of all the rest ; for one scale of a fir-cone
cannot be pulled off without spoiling the appearance of
the whole cone.
The Scottish pine, and some others, have scales
which are actually little wedges of solid wood, which
are not easy to pull apart till the seed is ripe, when
they fall down and open of themselves. The Wey¬
mouth pine has perhaps the nicest cones, long and
narrow, with even brown scales, fitting one over
another like armour, and ranged in a spiral winding
line, not in rings, but each single scale growing a little
higher than the last. They are the pleasantest to pick
up, and look prettiest when burning, when the main
part of the cone is black, and every scale has a flame-
coloured border, and then it goes off with a crack
which makes you start, and the turpentine lights up
into a clear flame. The leaves, like those of all ever¬
greens, make a beautiful cracking and hopping, as
everyone knows who likes burning the Christmas holly
on Candlemas-day. I believe the reason is, that there
are little air-vessels between the two coats of the ever-
NEEDLE TREES.
03
green leaves, and the sound is made as the vessels burst
and the air breaks out. How pleasant is the resinous
smell of the burning fir branch, and it is said that the
smell of the fresh boughs in an American forest is
delightful.
The silver fir is so called because the leaves are
white on the under side. The Scottish pine is more
branching than its northern brethren -r it has very long
leaves, more like threads than needles, and growing
two and two, spreading out like a pair of compasses.
And what shall we say of the uses of pines ? Deal
boards, pitch, rosin, turpentine ; never mind all that,
we don’t want such great things in a chapter on flow¬
ers, and you learnt it long ago in your school reading-
books, or in Harry and Lucy you have read of the
slide of Alpnach.
There is one river in Norway where the pine-trees
are thrown in at the source, and left to find their own
way to Bergen, with a direction to their owners on
their trunk, (like other travellers,) and down they come
with the stream, tumbling over waterfalls, whirling
round rocks, scrambling and dashing along as best
they can, till they are fairly caught at Bergen, and be¬
stowed in their master’s timber-yard. In some parts
of America the floors are strewn with a carpet of young
fresh pine-shoots, as here in old times the floors were
covered with fresh rushes.
The greatest and most noble of all the needle-trees is
the glorious Cedar of Lebanon, the tree which formed
the beams of Solomon’s Temple. It is not tall, but a
veiy wide-spreading magnificent tree, even as we see it
here ; and in its native home no one can look at the
broad old trunks, few and shattered as they are, with¬
out reverence for them as for something sacred.
94
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
The larch grows almost as far north as the fir, and
like it, bears cones and needles ; but it is deciduous,
that is, it lets its leaves fall, for they are far more ten¬
der than those of its companions, and have no double
coat, so that they are not fit to stand the winter. If
you wish to see anything beautiful, go in the spring
and look at the young larch blossom, the exquisite
little crimson catkin of scales, fit to be a tree in a fairy
forest, and afterwards at the soft purple conelet before
it grows to the hard, green, knobby, scaly thing of
autumn, or the brown one you may pick up now.
The cypress is another cone-bearer, not English, but
used in Italy to shade and ornament churchyards with
its dark spires ; and in gardens you may sometimes see
a beautiful light-green sort, called the deciduous cy¬
press, because it becomes bare in the winter.
CHAPTER XIII.
CLASSES OF FLOWERS. — CLASS I. AND II.
Classes of flowers ! What, are flowers in classes, like
school-children ?
Well, Ave have good authority for saying that good
gentle little school-children are
“ Like spring-flowers in their best array,
All silence and all smiles.”
And the same authority has shown us that there is a
great deal to admire in the “order wild” of the vege¬
table creation, the rule and regularity which prevails
in its formation, as, indeed, in every work of nature,
or, more truly, of nature’s God.
Thus there is a sufficient resemblance between dif¬
ferent plants to enable them to be arranged first in
CLASSES OF FLOWERS.
95
different classes, and then in smaller divisions called
families, which are convenient, as they enable us to find
out the names of new flowers, or plants, and even to
guess at a great many of their properties from their
likeness to others of the same tribe. I think now of
going through the classes, and telling you of such
noted flowers as we may have missed in our chapters
on the flowers of each month.
The first eleven classes are very easy, since they all
depend on the number of their stamens ; the first class
including all that have one stamen ; the second, two
stamens; the third, three stamens, and so on.
As to the first class, that is a very small one indeed,
I suppose because the supply of the pistil with pollen
could hardly be trusted to only one anther, Jointed
glasswort is one of these one-stamened blossoms, which
you may find if you live near the sea-shore. It is an
odd-looking pale green stiff branchy thing, with tiny
green flowers, which you can hardly find, as they sit
quite close to the stem, and scarcely show themselves,
I suppose because they are obliged to take such great
care of their single anther. As to its name of glass-
wort, it has acquired that because of the quantity of
potash it contains, and which, combined with sand,
forms glass. It is most probable that it wras of glass-
wort that the shipwrecked Phoenician sailors made
that fire on the sea-sliore of which everyone has heard,
and to which we owe it that our windows can admit
light, and let us see the sky, and the trees, and the
passers-by, without at the same time letting in wind
and rain. Yet to look at the sand, and the green
glasswort, and then at the transparent crystal window-
pane, does it not seem too wonderful to be true, almost
as strange a transformation as Cinderella’s rags into
the glass slipper?
96
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Inland people may find a first-class plant, if they
like to take the trouble of poking into a muddy stream
of running water, where, waving slowly with the
motion of the stream, they may find the marestail,
why so called I cannot tell, since such a tail would
look remarkably droll on any horse. It has a round,
thick, fleshy stem, as all water-plants have, a root with
a profusion of fibres, which, when you pull it up, bring
an immense mass of wood and slime ; and leaves which
grow in whorls, that is to say, in circles round the stem,
at intervals of about an inch. They are long and nar¬
row ; and as to the flower, it is almost as if there was
none at all, for there is no corolla, and veiy little calyx.
The blossoms, which come out in May and June, have
no stem, and are wedged in at the foot of the leaves ;
the single anther is red.
Don’t take horsetail for marestail, they are two very
different things, and are as far removed from each
other as possible, for the horsetail lias an “ unseen
blossom,” and belongs to the last of the classes, while
marestail, though very possibly its blossom may be un¬
seen by you, is in all the dignity of the very few num¬
ber ones of England.
The number twos are much more numerous and
much prettier. Most of them are very regular, and
follow the same rules. One pistil with two divisions
in the germ, two stamens, a corolla of one petal, but
with twice two divisions, and a calyx, with twice two
teeth, a berry, or a capsule, with two seeds. It is quite
refreshing to get back once more to flowers with
corollas, flowers which seem really like flowers, though
it is only hearing of them, not seeing them as yet.
Ah ! but we do see the promise of some of them, and
the memorials of them too. Look up to the taller
CLASSES OF FLOWERS.
97
shrubs, and see the green buds swelling in the rains of
February ; look at those brown dry clusters of old seed-
vessels, consisting each of two hard valves, which once
enclosed the seed. Those pale green buds at the end
of their dry branches contain the promise of our May
garlands. There lie folded up the whole “branch of
delicate green heart-shaped leaves, and the cluster,
the delicious cluster, of lilac blossoms, so thick, so
solid, so sweet, so full of perfume, so beautifully and
so irregularly shaped. May only the spring be warm
enough to bring them out by the 1st of May. Sweet
lilac ! One of the first things I can remember was the
glory of being carried on the shoulder of a kind friend
to gather the nodding heads of the lilac blossoms, fresh
and dewy with the spring showers ; and there is one
white lilac bush which I never look at without a feeling
of shame, when I remember the sad day when I tore
down one long branch in trying to reach the flowers
from my own small height ; the mark is still to be seen
on the bark, though it happened twenty years ago.
The lilac’s native home is in Persia, a hilly country,
as you know, and therefore in parts a cold one, so that
it is very hardy, and does not fear our winters. It is
one of the kind plants which are the Londoner’s friends,
for it grows without being very much stunted, in the
midst of the black gardens.
I wonder if you know those pretty lines about the
tenth commandment, which say that as the daisy is
like the lowly cottage child, so the lilac blossom nod¬
ding on its high tree, is like the high-born child, and
how both alike are sweet humble flowers in themselves,
doing their own duty where their Maker has placed
them.
The leaf' of the lilac is very pretty, and will serve
7
98
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
well to show you liow most leaves are formed. Out
of the sap-wood of the tree, within the bark, springs a
foot-stalk, a bundle of small fibres, which, after grow¬
ing some way, put forth on each side a number of
little branches or veins, which again send out lesser
veins, so that there is a close net-work, forming the
frame or skeleton of the leaf. This net-work is filled
up by a skin, or, properly speaking, by two skins with
little vessels between them, wondrously arranged, but
so as you cannot see them, for they are smaller than any
thing you can even imagine. And the use of leaves ?
Besides shading us, and some kinds being good to eat,
they are of great use to the plants, for by them they
breathe. I do not think I can make you understand
even what has been discovered about it ; but by day
they draw in the portion of the air, which by night
they breathe out again, and this is what keeps them
alive, with the sap flowing to the points of the leaves
through all the net-work of veins.
The jessamine, which is also of the second class,
always puts me in mind, more especially the white
one, of the quiet humble grace and simplicity that is
most often to be seen in the most nobly-born maidens,
and which make, in every station, a lady’s mind.
Those starry pearly flowers, are they not like the
pearl of great price, the ornament of a meek and quiet
spirit ?
The throat of the corolla of the jessamine is remark¬
ably long, which is what gives it its peculiar elegance ;
the buds are most gracefully folded, and the leaves,
which consist of seven leaflets, are particularly ele¬
gantly formed. The fruit is a berry, but the cold of
England prevents it from ripening here, for the native
country of the white kind is India ; of the yellow,
CLASSES OF FLOWERS.
99
Madeira. The small yellow kind is hardier, as it
comes from Circassia, and there have been “jasmine
bowers” in England, at least ever since the time of
Queen Elizabeth.
The olive, that sacred plant, which furnished the
holy oil for anointing, is another of these plants with
two stamens. It has a white blossom, and a large
black berry, full of sweet oil, which is used for food
all through the south of Europe and western Asia.
The leaf is of a curious pale bluish green, and the
trunk grows to a great size, and lives to a considerable
age. Pilgrims to Jerusalem tell us how they have
knelt with fear and reverence among the aged trees of
the garden of Gethsemane, sprung from those which
shaded our blessed Lord in His agony.
And do you remember that the oil of olive is a
token of the grace of the Holy Spirit shown in love ?
And that the Psalmist says of the righteous man, that
“ his children are like the olive branches round about
his table.” Perhaps this is the reason that Olive and
Oliver are Christian names ; at any rate I am sure
those children are more like olive-branches who sit in
love and kindness round their father’s table, than those
who grieve him by strife and bitterness.
Ever since Noah’s dove brought back the olive-leaf,
it has been an emblem of peace and joy, even among
heathen nations. The Athenians had a fable, that two
of their deities, Neptune and Minerva, disputed which
should be sovereign of their city, and it was resolved
that it should be that one who could give the richest
present to the new town. Neptune gave a horse,
Minerva an olive, and that precious tree was adjudged
to be so much the best gift, that Minerva became the
great goddess of Athens, which was called after her
100
THE nERB OF THE FIELD.
Greek name of Athene. There was a tree in the
Acropolis which they fancied was the very one she had
produced ; it was burnt and cut down when Xerxes
took the town, but they thought it a promise of their
renewed prosperity when a fresh branch shot out from
the root.
Sometimes when a nation intended to offer peace
or war to another people, they gave them their choice
between a sword or an olive branch ; and this gave rise
to the saying, that when a person wishes to be recon¬
ciled to his enemy, he holds out the olive branch.
The privet, with its white blossoms and black
berries, is of this class, as you will find by ex¬
amining it.
So is also the sweet-scented verbena, with those
most fragrant of all leaves, which are sometimes called
lemon. It conies from Buenos Ayres, and its splendid
brethren, the creeping verbenas, purple, crimson, or
dazzling scarlet, are, I believe, Mexican, and form the
pride of gardens in early autumn. But the most
curious history of all belongs to the little plain Eng¬
lish verbena, a plant with insignificant whitish lilac
flowers, that is generally to be found in hedges by
turnpike roads, in July or August, coated all over with
dust. Vervain, as it is called in English, played in
ancient British days a most important part ; indeed,
the Druidesses made as great a fuss with it as the
Druids did with the mistletoe. The strangest thing
was, that they were never to touch it. It was to be
gathered at midnight, at the full of the moon, in this
manner : a long string with a loop in it was thrown
over the vervain, and the other end fastened to the
left great toe of a young virgin, who was then to drag
at it till she had uprooted it. The eldest Druidess
CLASSES OF FLOWERS.
101
then received it in a cloth, and carried it home, to
use it for medicinal purposes and offerings to their
gods.
After Druidism had long been forgotten, vervain
was still considered as full of healing virtues, and it
always stood first among the herbs used by the old
women who used to be the only doctors.
The verbenas have a four-cleft corolla, and some¬
times two, sometimes four stamens, so that botanists
have not been well decided whether to arrange them
in class two, or class fourteen, which consists of the
labiate flowers. Sage, with its two branching stamens,
is in the same doubt, and so is the little marsh-butter-
wort, a beautiful summer flower, with a deep-blue blos¬
som, growing on a single stem, two stamens, a long
spur behind, and very light-green leaves lying close to
the ground.
The gipsy-wort, with leaves like a nettle, and whorls
of white flowers, growing in wet woods ; and the en¬
chanter’s night-shade, a beautiful little delicate plant
with heart-shaped leaves, a stem red at the tip, and
white flowers, are both of this class. I wish I knew
why the last is called by that weird-like name.
The ash-tree is of class two, and so is the whole
pretty tribe of veronica, tiny plants, with a corolla
always four-cleft, with two divisions equal, and of the
other two, one much larger than the other. Their
English name is speedwell, and a very pretty name it
is, for such bright cheerful wayside flowers as they are,
peeping out with their blue eyes under the dusty
hedge to smile on the tired traveller, and give him a
cheerful greeting to speed him well on his way. The
largest English kind, the germander speedwell, is of
the most lovely azure that I know in any flower. The
102
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
common speedwell, with a small pale flower, is a very
troublesome weed in gardens ; the water-speedwell, or
brooklime, with a flat fleshy stem, has a very pretty
blue flower, and is no doubt known to water-cress
gatherers. The leaves of all, except the two water
kinds, are cut like the edge of a saw, and covered with
small white hairs. The capsule, or seed-vessel, is very
prettily shaped, just like a heart, with a rib in the
middle, dividing it into two halves. There are a great
many English sorts, and many more foreign ones,
some of which are cultivated in gardens. The Latin
name, veronica, means true image. I do not know
why it was given to this little flower, but I like to
think that it was thus intended to put us in mind that
the true image of the greatness and goodness of God
may be seen reflected in the marvellous structure of
even so lowly a work as a little blue speedwell.
And lastly, one word of the funny duckweed, a
green veil over the black water of the pond, with no
roots at all, only one little fibre hanging down below
the leaf, to drink the water ; and as for flower it has
none, but it keeps its two stamens and one pistil in its
pocket.
Yes, really in a little pocket on one side of the leaf,
where, if you look very sharp, you may just see the
two tiny anthers peeping out, as the eyes of the young
kangaroos do out of their mother’s pouch. Now look
over all class two, and try to make acquaintance with
them all this summer.
SPEARS AND FLAGS.
103
CHAPTER XTY.
CLASS III. — SPEARS AND FLAGS.
Class the third includes a large and beautiful army,
each hearing aloft a tall sharp spear, and often a most
exquisite crest or plume, and a long narrow tapering
streamer, like the pennoncel of a knight at a tourna¬
ment. These fairy lances spread through the length
and breadth of every country ; there is nothing so fre¬
quent as, and nothing more pleasant to the eye than,
a whole array of them in a fair field, waving their
crests and streamers, and covering the ground so
closely that scarce any colour is visible, except their
own fresh green fairy uniform. They are of all sizes ;
some tiny and bending to the tread ; some, and chiefly
the bands which guard the river’s brink, tall, firm, and
solid ; and these, the frontier troops, have among them
swordsmen bearing beauteous standards, more lovely
and richer in tint than ever was banner of silk, woven
and embroidered by the hands of a fair lady, to lead an
army in a glorious cause.
When France was true and loyal, and her sovereign
gloried in the title of “ Most Christian King,” her
banner was the same at that of these green hosts ; and
St. Louis led his crusade beneath the waving fleur-de-
lys, and wore it marked on his robe and on his shield,
seeing in its threefold formation an emblem of the
highest mystery of the Christian faith.
I cannot say that it was well represented in those
days ; and the thing with three points carved in stone,
or represented in gold on a blue ground, which we call
104
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
the “ fleur-de-lys,” though graceful and beautiful in
form, and recalling many a bright memory of old faith
and loyalty, is a very poor likeness of the lovely iris,
or Hag-flower, so poor, indeed, that we could hardly
guess it was intended for the same.
The very name of fleur-de-lys is a mistake, as
modern botanists have settled it, for it means lily-
flower ; and the iris in no respect resembles the lily,
which we shall find in the sixth class instead of the
third.
Iris, the botanical name of the flag, or fleur-de-lys,
means the eye of heaven, and was given by the Greeks
and Romans to the rainbow, which they thought the
path of the beautiful messenger of the gods. They
were not so far wrong in this : or perhaps they had
some dim tradition that the lovely bow in the cloud is
really a messenger of mercy to us from heaven.
The name was given to the flower from its varied
tints, blending into each other as the colours do in the
rainbow. Purple, blue, and yellow, of all shades, are
to be found in these noble flowers, and of such depth
and richness, that no colouring equals them.
We have two English kinds of iris; the yellow one,
which grows by the river side, and which perhaps you
know by the name of the yellow flag ; and the
stinking flag, a delicate purple one, with a very dis¬
agreeable smell, which grows in hedges, and ornaments
them in autumn with its splendid scarlet fruit. The
great deep- purple iris, in gardens, comes from Syria;
the little red-purple one from Persia. It was intro¬
duced by Queen Henrietta Maria, who was very fond
of flowers ; and the blue and yellow sort, with the very
narrow leaves, which we commonly call the fleur-de-lys,
is from Hungary.
SPEARS AND FLAGS.
105
When the irises come into blossom, you will see
their stem coming curiously out from an opening in the
edge of their broad, and, for the most part, sword-
shaped leaves, and bearing a thick sheath packed up
in the same hard straight leaves, containing one or two
buds, which, like those of the daffodil, are enclosed in a
thin transparent skin, like silver paper, which peels off*
as the blossom unfolds. I dare say you would be
puzzled at the appearance of the flower ; it stands very
upright, on a green fleshy stem, and seems to consist of
nothing but nine petals, in threes ; three broad beautiful
ones, turning over and hanging down, with an exquisite
pattern in blue or yellow, or shades of both, wonder¬
fully blended together ; three little plain ones, between
these larger ones, standing up, rather pertly ; and three
more middle sized, of a lighter colour, and with a ridge
down the middle, shutting down like a lid on the inner
side of the large ones. Where are all the stamens and
pistils? We must make a few researches. Suppose
we see what is so carefully nursed under that lid.
Take hold of it gently by that pretty jagged fringed
edge which makes a canopy over its door-way, lift it
up, and peep under it. How beautiful ! It is like
looking into a little house, and such a house as it is,
with such marblings and paintings of streaks of black,
or deep blue, or rich yellow ! And all along the middle
of the great outer petal, it is a wonderful crest, or
rather mane, of beautiful little soft thick hairs, forming
a downy bed, exactly fitting the shape of the long, nar¬
row, stiff inhabitant of this lovely little dwelling. I
dare say you have recognized this beautifully lodged
gentleman to be a stamen, with a very long anther, and
his two brothers live in the other two dwelling-places
near at hand. It is very curious that they should thus
106
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
lodge apart, instead of being sociably together like the
stamens of every other flower I know. Now, where is
the pistil ? Is it not to be found ? Look beneath the
flower, at the stem. This swelling part, regularly
divided into three ridges, is the germ ; the slender part
on which the corolla rests, is the style ; and the stig¬
ma — Why ! the stigma is what we have been calling the
middle-sized petals, the lids of the little box containing
the stamens. Certainly the iris is as wonderful a
flower as it is beautiful. It is all, as you see, in threes ;
three large petals, three small, three stamens, three di¬
visions of the stigma, three of the germ, and there will
be three seed-vessels, and three seeds in each vessel.
Last summer, I found the iris stamen-houses turned to
a purpose I did not expect. They were the very larder
whither the spider invited the fly. In a large white
iris, a green vagabond spider, of the size and colour of a
green pea, had his dwelling. There, for a full week, we
watched him, lying in wait in the middle of the flower,
and storing his victims in its divisions. There were
slain and devoured in one week, a dumbledore, two
bees, and flies beyond reckoning, first caught, then kept
awhile in the yellow and white larder, their juices
sucked, and at last thrown down to make way for a
fresh prisoner. The flower faded in time, and the
spider disappeared, having taught us a new use for the
iris blossom.
The roots of some irises are bulbous, others are
creeping, especially those that grow near the water.
One kind, called orris root, is used for a perfume. The
gladiolus, little sword, or corn-flag, is in some points
like the iris ; it is a most beautiful flower, but only one
sort is very common in gardens here ; this is the pink
kind, which ornaments the corn-fields of Italy.
SPEARS AND FLAGS.
107
Having done with the flags, let us begin upon the
armies marshalled beneath them — I mean those pre¬
cious gifts, the grasses, perhaps the most valuable of the
whole of the vegetable creation, the food of man and
beast. You are surprised now, for you never thought
of eating grass ; you never heard of any one who did,
excepting Nebuchadnezzar, in the time of his punish¬
ment. But what shall you think when I tell you, that
without grasses you would have neither bread, beer,
gruel, porridge, rice, nor sugar, to say nothing of the
mutton and beef, the milk, butter, and cheese, which
are supplied to us by animals which live on grasses ?
X will give you a description which applies to every
kind of grass. The root is creeping, the stem smooth,
round, hollow, and jointed, the lower part consisting of
leaves, long, narrow, undivided leaves, rolled up, and
sheathed one over the other. At each joint one of
these leaves ceases to embrace the others, and hangs
down, tapering off to a point, while the one next above
it becomes the outside covering, and so continues till
the next joint, where it, too, opens and hangs down on
the opposite side to the former one. Each joint con¬
tains a certain quantity of sweet sugary juice. The
stem, properly so called, springs from within the last
leaf, and supports the blossom, which grows in a head,
tuft, or spike, containing a number of small flowers.
Each flower has of its own, two scales, by way of co¬
rolla and calyx, one over the other, and the outer one
ending in a sharp point or bristle ; and these, by the
assistance of the scales of the next flower, enclose a
soft, pulpy, sweet germ, bearing two tiny styles, and
three stamens, with very long weak filaments, which
hang their anthers out far beyond the flower.
If you think about it, you will see then that wheat
108
THE HERB OF TIIE FIELD.
is really a large kind of grass. The spike of blossom,
is the ear, and in July you may see the anthers hang¬
ing out, and a beautiful shape they are — much prettier
than any other anthers I know. Though there is much
to say, and little space to say it in, it would be un¬
thankful not to dwell for a little while on the beauty
and precious thoughts belonging “ to seed-time and to
harvest-tide.”
The seed is cast forth for the soil to foster, even as
our hearts are bidden to foster that more precious seed ;
and then, if it falls into good ground, it puts forth its
green blades, that seem at first to be like a thin veil over
the dark-brown earth, which then thicken and spread in
their well-ordered rows, till the whole field bears that
loveliest of all hues, the green of young wheat in spring.
Taller and taller grow the spikes, sheath and pennon
rise, joint above joint, till thick and high they stand;
so high, that a little child’s head is quite lost between
the ranks on either side the field path, and it feels for
a moment as if it was lost in a dense forest, and trots
along in a fright to overtake its mother. The upper¬
most sheath swells and opens a long slit, within which
is the tender green ear, shooting out daily higher and
higher on the slender green stalk, and in time harden¬
ing its chaffy scales, and putting forth its anthers.
This is the time of dread lest a hail-storm should break
or bend the straw, and send the whole crop flat, so that
it cannot blossom or ripen equally, and may be tied
down by bind- weed. It is the time when we most feel
that man may do his utmost, but God alone can give
the increase.
But now the anthers have shed their pollen and
fallen, their duty being done ; the sweet pulpy germ is
hardening, and turning to “ the full corn in the ear,”
SPEARS AND FLAGS.
109
and over straw, and blade, and ear, a pale rich golden
tint is gradually descending ; the hill sides and valleys
far away stand so thick with corn that they laugh and
sing ; the fields are truly white to the harvest, and the
sunny waves of wind pass over them, as they bend
softly and rise again.
Now comes the harvest, to which all the village,
small and great, have been looking forward so long.
Out they all turn, father and mother, great sons and
daughters, to reap, and little ones to look after lesser ;
long paths and gaps open before them, and the beauti¬
ful clusters of sheaves appear on the stubble : the merry
cry rings out when the last field is reaped —
“We have ploughed, we have sowed,
We have reaped, we have mowed.”
And then some wild cheery shout to finish with.
And then the carting, the loading, the wagons with the
noble brown stacks heaped high — higher ; the round
mow, built up, and the builder rising higher in the air
with every round of sheaves ; and the last wagon with
the horses with green boughs, coming late home,
perhaps by the light of the round harvest moon :
“ Our work is over, over now,
The good man wipes his weary brow ;
The last long wain wends slow away,
And we are free to sport and play.
The night comes on when sets the sun,
And labour ends when day is done.
When summer ends, and autumn’s come,
We hold our jovial harvest home.”
And last of all the gleaning, or, as the gleaners gene¬
rally call it, the leasing.
Beautiful things in themselves, beautiful in the
thoughts they bring with them — the good seed — the
seed sown in grief, which shall be brought again with
110
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
joy — the good man in his old age going down to his
grave in peace, like a shock of corn in full season —
and lastly, the great harvest day, when the cry shall
be, “ Put ye in the sickle to the corn,” and the reapers
shall be the angels.
In the Holy Land, the harvest is much earlier than
here ; it comes about Easter, and this explains how it
is that the feast of weeks, at Whitsuntide, should have
been the festival of thanksgiving for the harvest. How
beautiful the offering of the first-fruits was, when the
Israelite brought his sheaf for the priest to wave before
the Lord, acknowledging the mercy, by saying, “ A
Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went
down into Egypt and became a great nation !”
Did you ever see Egyptian wheat? I have some
which sprung from seeds found within the case of a
mummy, which must have been embalmed at least
three thousand years ago. The form of it would make
you understand the seven ears on one stalk in Pharaoh’s
dream, for each ear is very wide, and spreads out into
seven, nine, or eleven little points on each side, so as to
be so many ears in one.
Next to wheat comes barley, John Barleycorn, “ his
head well armed with pointed spears,” which look
beautiful and silvery in the summer sunshine, as the
wind weaves gently over the field. The spears are pro¬
longations of the awn or bristle, wdiich all grasses bear
at the point of their calyx. It is sad to think that bar¬
ley, that good gift of heaven, should sometimes be turned
to such an evil use by men’s self-indulgence.
Oats bear their blossoms, not in ears, but in loose,
graceful waving heads, the florets in pairs. Rye grows
in cold, poor lands, unfit for wheat. These four are
sometimes called Cerealia, after Ceres, whom the hea-
SFEARS AND FLAGS.
Ill
thens used to worship as the goddess of wheat. Bice
is a kind of grass, which grows in the very hottest and
wettest places it can find, chiefly in India and Carolina.
It is sown under water, and trodden into the earth by
asses or oxen. The blossom is a good deal like oats.
It is the chief food of the natives of India, who can live
upon such a small quantity, that the people of colder
climates would soon starve on it.
These are the grasses whose grains are used by man
for food. Then follow the multitudes, the leaves of
which are eaten by animals. I am afraid it would be
in vain to begin describing them, there are so many ;
but if you will only pay a little attention to them, you
will see how endless is their beauty and variety. There
is the quiver, or quaking grass, with its delicate purple-
brown pendant tufts shaking in the wind, on their
slightest of all stems ; the tall oat-grass in the woods ;
the long ray grass, with which little girls sometimes
practice a very silly kind of fortune-telling, which they
had better leave oil' as soon as possible ; the brome grass,
with tufted scaly heads, in the upland hayfields ; the
cotton grass in bogs, with one stiff straight stem, and
large tufts of silky cotton enveloping the seed, waving
white, and shining in the marsh. It is said that it is
used in Sweden to stuff pillows. I have seen a chimney-
piece ornamented very prettily with a collection of
different kinds of grasses, tufts, feathers, plumes, ears,
and spikes, an infinite variety, all brown and dry, but
preserving their form and beauty.
The hay-field — I could stop there as long as in the
harvest-field ; the sweet grass, the long ridges, the
cocks, the busy sunny hay-makers, the horses munching
away so happily, while the wagon is piled, the hay
home — that is a time of times, indeed !
112
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
But we must make haste, for this has been a long
chapter, and speak of the great grass which is valued
for its juice. The sugar cane is a grass of twenty feet
high, and the sugar is made from the juice at its joints.
It is just as good sugar that you may suck out of the
joints of almost any kind of English grass, only there is
not so much of it. The bamboo, or cane, is another
grass, witli a much harder stem, sometimes fifty feet
high, and proportionately thick, the leaves of huge size,
and the whole plant of infinite use to the natives of
tropical countries.
It is only in the tropics that grasses grow to such
a size. In Brazil, the hay is seven or eight feet high,
and the huge reeds and canes are as great forests to
men, as our wheat fields are to babies ; but grasses,
small or large, are to be found in all parts of the world,
excepting in the extremes of cold and of drought. The
species in the southern temperate zone are much fewer
than those in the northern, and very unlike them. The
most noted of these far southern grasses, is the tussock
grass, which almost entirely covers Terra-del-Fuego,
and the Falkland Isles, and is said to be like little palm
trees about four feet high.
Of all the lands where grass grows, there is, how¬
ever, not one where it prospers so well, or is so fresh
and green, as in England. Our climate is just moist
enough for it ; our sun fosters it, and makes it sweet
and strong ; and the dew and rain so freshen it, that it
is seldom withered and dried up, like that “ whereof
the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth up
the sheaves his bosom.” And thus England is said by all
who have seen her, to be the greenest of all lands. May
the souls of her children only prosper equally in the
dew of heavenly grace, since well do they know that of
FLOCKS OF FLOWERS.
113
their earthly part it has been said, “ All flesh is grass,
and all the goodliness thereof as a flower of the field.”
“ The grass withereth, the flower fadetli, because the
Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people
is grass.”
CHAPTER XV.
CLASS IV. — FLOCKS OF FLOWERS.
Proceeding regularly, according to the classes, A\re
next come to some which might be taken for com¬
pound flowers, if we did not know that these have five
stamens united at the anthers, and none which do not
fulfil this condition can be reckoned in that class, which
is the nineteenth.
The fourth class consists for the most part of aggre¬
gate flowers, so called from the Latin word ij rex , a
flock, because they are all gathered and sheltered
within the same calyx, like a flock of sheep within
the same fold.
You may best make acquaintance \\Tith these little
flocks in the scabious — which haunts the upland pas¬
tures, hedgeroAvs, and heathy Avoods. There are thirty-
four species of scabious, but only three which come
much in our way — tAvo in the heaths and Avoods, and
one in the garden.
The larger English scabious is a tall straggling plant,
growing in ill-kept hedges, wild rough ground, and
barren pastures. The leaves are of a pale colour,
covered Avith short rough hairs, and variously cut,
more or less deeply, and the stems are long and irregu¬
larly branched, the blossoms are of a pale, cloudy blue,
8
114
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
almost grey; the calyx consists of a number of long
narrow leaflets lapping one over the other, but each
flower within has its own proper calyx, consisting of
little hard sharp chaffy points growing out of the germ.
The germs are hard four-sided wedges, the points of
which are all packed together beneath, while the upper
spreading parts bear the four stamens. The anthers
are the prettiest part of the flower, being of a bright
blue, a very uncommon colour in anthers, which, as
you may have observed, are almost always of some
shade of yellow. The corolla is of one petal, irregu¬
larly cut, and sometimes in four, sometimes in five
divisions. The outermost of the flowers seem to make
it their business to guard the rest, and therefore wear
much larger corollas, so that the whole head of flowers
sometimes has the appearance of one of those pretty
round, garlanded, shepherdess-hats that one sees in old
picture-books ; but in general it is an awkward, untidy,
irregular-looking plant, not nearly so pretty as the
other English kind, the meadow scabious.
This is much smaller, and when its flock are all
lambs, it is uncommonly pretty, the little buds being
all hard and round, and sitting so close together that
they give the notion of being well packed and com¬
fortable. It is very pretty when in full blossom too,
with its dark blue corollas, all alike, and all regular
and well cut, and seen through a whole forest of pretty
anthers, sometimes blue, sometimes pink, and of the
white pin-like stigmas.
The garden kind is the handsomest of all, but it re¬
quires to be well tied up and trimmed, for it is a
straggling, unruly, scrambling plant. The flowers are
of the richest deep dark red purple, the larger ones
forming an ornamental trimming round the border,
FLOCKS OF FLOWERS.
115
and the inner ones being almost black, which, with
their white stigmas, has caused them to be called, in
cottage gardens, by the name of widows. I have
sometimes wondered that little girls, who are ingenious
with their needles, do not try to make velvet pin¬
cushions in imitation of these flowers, with pins for
the stigmas, though, to be sure, they would produce
anything but a flattering resemblance of the flower, so
perhaps they had better let it alone.
When the blossom of the scabious is over, it is easy
to see the little wedges of germs, still with their sharp
prickly whiskers of calyx, all rising up together in a
sort of mountain, holding at first tight, then more
loosely, to each other, as if loath to part from the
loving fellowship in which they have flourished to¬
gether, and worn together their rich and sober array ;
and not parting till rain, frost, or wind finally rend
them asunder, and send them each to be the founder
of a fresh colony of scabious. Nobody exactly knows
whence this kind of scabious came ; it has been grow¬
ing in English gardens for the last two hundred years,
but whence it was brought is not certain.
The next aggregate flower is a bold fierce fellow, one
of the tallest, strongest, and sharpest of the dwellers
in our hedges, the teazel, namely. How prickly it
is, only second in sharpness to the thistle, wearing a
hedge of thorns in every possible place where there is
room for them. The whole of the firm hard hollow
stem is scattered with little hooks, bent downwards ;
the chief ribs of the leaves have prickles all along their
under side; the long narrow leaflets of the common
calyx are perfect ranks of pricks beneath ; and as to
the great head itself, it is a very porcupine, for each
little lilac flower dwells at the very bottom of a deep
116
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
calyx, furnished with two hard, sharp, strong spikes,
like a warrior’s spears set up before his tent. Not
only are these spikes sharpened at the point, but the
whole length is jagged with little hooked teeth, and so
hard and tough is the substance, that long after the
blossom has faded, all through autumn and winter you
may see the brown stem and bristly head standing
boldly up, facing all the storms of snow and rain, and
not lost sight of till summer comes again.
Indeed, from its long endurance in this condition,
we generally think of a teazel as this hard, dry,
bleached object, instead of the beautiful creature it is
in its prime, in the middle of July, when the calyx
spines are in their full glory of green freshness, and
the principal head standing up in its grandeur, with
the little attendant ones on either side, looking like a
monarch wearing his crown ; for the flowers do not all
blossom at once, but come out in bands or circlets
round the conical head, so as to resemble a garland
bound round it. Truly the teazel thus crowned is a
noble warrior of the way-side. And he is to be ad¬
mired, too, for his patient endurance in firmness and
strength long after his brightest days are past.
The leaves of the teazel are curious ; they are what
is called sessile, sitting on the stem, that is to say,
without leaf-stalks. They grow in pairs, and the lower
ones meet quite together and join at the bottom, form¬
ing but one leaf round the stem, and making a deep
cup, which after rain is often to be found filled with
water ; indeed, I have seen this pretty green pond well
filled, even in the midst of a dry summer, so as to keep
the leaves strong, healthy, and fresh, as long as they
are required to draw in air for the growing seed.
The teazel is of importance to the making of cloth,
FLOCKS OF FLOWERS.
117
for the little delicate yet firm hooks are better than
anything that man. with all his machinery, has ever
been able to devise for raising the nap without tear¬
ing the cloth itself. For this purpose large fields of
teazels are grown in the manufacturing counties, their
heads are cut off and fixed in a frame, well sorted
according to their sizes, and the cloth being damped
and spread out on a table, they are drawn across it,
and the little claws just raise the threads sufficiently to
give the soft woolliness of effect. So much did the
cloth-makers of old value the teazel, that three teazel
heads are the arms of the Clothiers’ Company.
Another aggregate flower is the plantain or ribgrass,
the prettiest kind of which is the ribwort plantain,
better known to country children by the name of
knock-heads. You see the reason of the name of rib¬
wort in the broad ribs of the leaves, with their pur¬
plish pink stems ; and oh ! the toughness of the stalks,
so much easier to pull up from the root than to break.
The head of blossom is very pretty; the little calyxes
as black as jet, and very hard and lasting ; the corollas
very small and brown, and coming out like the teazel,
in bands, instead of all at once ; the anthers cream-
coloured, and the filaments very long, so that when in
blossom the black head wears a most beautiful and
graceful wreath of white dancing pearls or studs, I
hardly know which to call them.
I daresay you have often twisted and knocked the
heads together to try which has the strongest stalk,
but I wonder whether you know how to make a knock-
head basket ? Gather a good many of the longest and
strongest you can find, pull off their pretty black heads,
crowns, and all, then take the stoutest of all, and give
it to some small brother or sister to hold at full length
118
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
for you. Then take one of the others, bend it in the
middle, and give it one twist round the first. Oh, but
we want another pair of hands, some other little per¬
son must come and hold the ends. Hold them tight
while you twist another knock-head in the same way,
and add the ends to the former one ; then another,
and another ; hold fast and be patient, little helpers,
till some twenty or five-and-twenty have been put
on, twisted in the middle, and the ends held in two
bundles. Now get some string, tie one set of ends
together, now tie the other, cut them even, then re¬
lease the little ones who had been holding the first
stalk so patiently, and tie the ends of that together as
neatly as you can for the handle, and now you have a
knock-head basket. It will not stand, to be sure, for
it has only a ridge at the bottom, and it will only last
a day, but it will do very nicely to please the little
ones and hold daisies ; and if you are as happy making
them as I have been, you will not be much to be pitied.
Here is the hoary plantain, with leaves growing in
a neat compact form close to the ground, tall stems
with white cottony coats and long heads, which have
pretty pale pink filaments and white anthers ; there is
also the buckshorn plaintain, or star of the earth, so
called from its branching leaves, which spread out like
a star in very dry pastures. And the greater plantain,
with very long heads and pink stamens, growing in the
hedges of fields, and in the sides of cart-tracks, is well
known to all keepers of caged birds ; for the chirp and
hop with which the canary or bullfinch receives it, is a
sufficient reward for all the pain the tough stem may
give the fingers that uproot it.
The burnet is another aggregate flower, the blossoms
of which come out a few at a time, on its round green
FLOCKS OF FLOWERS.
119
head, and are of a beautiful deep crimson. It used to
be valued for the food of cattle, and though it is now
little regarded, it is often to be found in grass fields.
And beautiful, most beautiful, among garden shrubs
is the budlea, with its little orange-coloured balls,
delightful to the eye and delightful to the smell. O,
the beautiful garden where I remember them, with its
sloping green bank, and the ragged fir-trees opening
to show the church tower, and the arm of the sea
which could just be seen through the trees, with the
little white-sailed boats tacking about on it ; and the
gum-cistus raining down its frail leaves in the middle
of the grass-plot, where we used to blow our soap-
bubbles, and try to make them sail away over the
house ; and the blue sky and bright sun ; and the
orange balls of the budleas hanging high up and con¬
trasting with the blue of the sky. You will say the
budlea has little to do with all this, but it was there
that I first knew and first loved those bright little
orange marbles, and the very sight of them always
brings back in a moment the sights and sounds of that
pleasant place. I daresay it is a beautiful sight in its
own home on the skirts of the Andes in Chili, from
whence it was brought to England about the year 1774.
Besides these pretty flocks of flowers, the fourth class
contains a set called crossworts, with all their parts
divided in fours ; a stem in an exact square, leaves at
regular intervals, growing in twice fours, a calyx in
four divisions, a corolla likewise in fours — four sta¬
mens, half four cells to the germ, and four seeds.
The largest of these crossworts is the sweet wood¬
ruff, with its pretty white stars of flowers, and the
leaves that remain sweet so long after they are gather¬
ed. It has many relations, with very small flowers,
120
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
and a profusion of them ; the white and yellow ladies’-
bed-straw, which you may find in quantities along the
lanes in the latter part of the summer ; and there is a
pretty lilac sort somewhat larger, which grows in gar¬
dens, whither it has been brought from Persia, and
which is apt to grow and spread much too fast.
There is also the cliders, or goose-grass, which every¬
body knows, and everybody dreads, so thickly are its
long, weak, trailing stems, its narrow leaves and round
seed-vessels, stuck with little tiny hooks, which, when
once they have a hold, seem as if they would never
loose it again, and when you pull them off in one
place, catch hold in another.
Woe to the silk fringes which venture into a hedge
with cliders, for the little round balls roll themselves
in so tight, that fringe and all must come away to get
them out ; and even our spaniel’s long silky ears often
come home so thickly stuck and knotted with them,
that much pulling and tugging from us, and many a
little remonstrating squeak on his part, come to pass
before they look as they ought to do, like his own
beautiful flowing locks.
Cliders have a very minute white flower ; I believe
the proper name is cleavers, because they cleave so
fast. They are very good food for young turkeys
when chopped up with chives and egg ; indeed, in for¬
mer days great virtues were attributed to them, espe¬
cially the cure of the ear-ache, and of the bites of vipers
and spiders. If ever a spider bites you, pray try to
cure it with cliders. My old botany-book also says,
that Dioscorides observes that the shepherds make use
of it to strain their milk through. I wish Dioscorides
had also told us how they managed to do so.
The holly also belongs to the fourth class, and so do
MORE PENTAGON FLOWERS.
121
a few other plants, but none of any note. The pretty
ladies’-mantle, with a green blossom and an elegant
leaf, something the shape of a mallow, is the only one
you are likely to notice, unless you go much deeper
into botany than these chapters can take you.
There is a beautiful foreign tribe called the Protea,
growing in Africa and South America, with wonderful
leaves and magnificent blossoms. They are sometimes
to be seen here in hot-houses, but as I never made ac¬
quaintance with them, I will say nothing about them,
except that if ever you come in tlieir way, you will be
more surprised than by anything you have seen yet in
the way of flowers.
CHAPTER XVI.
CLASS V. — MORE PENTAGON FLOWERS.
Last year we disposed of a good many of the fifth class
among the pentagon flowers, but still there remain
several more which I hardly like to pass over without
notice, even at the risk of making this more of a cata¬
logue of flowers than an account of them. They are
so plentiful, and so beautiful, that what to one child
may be only a name in print, will to another recall
some graceful, fresh, lovely thing, that has gladdened
her eyes every summer, and been the pride of her nose¬
gays during its reign, but of which she has never known
the real name.
First stands that tall, dignified plant, the viper’s
bugloss, at least in its perfection it is one of the most
magnificent of wild flowers, though it varies extremely
in size. On a loose gravelly soil, such as suits it, it
122
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
grows to a great height. I have pulled up one piece,
which, from the crown of its purple head to the ex¬
treme point of its jetty black, straight, tapering root,
measured more than a yard and a half, whereas in a
poor starved ground, where it has either too much or
too little water, it dwindles to be scarcely three inches
high, and is hardly to be recognised as the same plant.
It is named both in Latin and English from a viper,
because of its numerous stings, or rather bristles. They
grow white and hoary, all over its alternate leaves, and
dark red and sharp they stud the pale-green stem ;
they fringe the calyx, and guard the whole person of
this monarch of the waste from head to foot.
I call the viper’s bugloss a monarch, because it is so
royally robed. See the beautiful deep blue of the full¬
blown flowers, the purple tinge of those which have
just opened, and, more exquisite than all, the bright
red of the bud which is slowly rising from its bristling
case, and preparing to unfold itself to-morrow. And
these fine colours are brought into close contrast, for
see, the grand spike bears its blossoms on little side-
stems, each closely set with a double row of buds, and
curling downwards and inwards towards the point.
The flowers nearest to the main stem blossom first ;
then, as they wither, the spikelet straightens as those
further back expand, and thus, unlike most spiked
plants, where the lower blossoms come out first, and
fade before the upper ones are blown, the whole length
of the tall head is at once arrayed in blue flowers and
crimson buds, the blue set off to still greater advantage
by the five long crimson stamens within.
There are several others of these coarse prickly-
stemmed plants, with curling spikes of blossom, and
for the most part with blue flowers, with a tendency
MORE PENTAGON FLOWERS.
123
to turn red. The anchusa, or alkanet, the borage with
black stamens, the lungwort with spotted leaves, often
found in cottage gardens, and the comfrey, are of these.
The wild comfrey, growing by the river bank, with
large rough leaves and bell-sliaped flowers, blossoming
in pairs, and with five curious scales closing the throat
of the corolla, is of all shades, between deep red, purple,
and yellowish white ; you can hardly find two plants
bearing exactly the same tint ; but that fine, tall,
bushy plant, the prickly comfrey, which grows in gar¬
dens, has blossoms which are pink in the bud, and
blue when unfolded.
The liound’s-tongue, so called from the form of its
leaves, has small dark-red blossoms, very pretty, but
the wholp plant, wLicli grows by the wray-side, gene¬
rally wears a thick coat of dust, and it has a peculiar
smell, which probably led to its being once used in
medicine.
The henbane, poisonous to those who eat it un¬
guardedly, is very valuable as medicine when properly
prepared. It is not very often seen growing, but when
it is found, it is usually on waste land, by road-sides.
It grows close to the ground, with pale, woolly, clammy
leaves, an unpleasant smell, and a handsome, but
venomous-looking, flower, of pale cream-colour, cover¬
ed with a network of purple lines, and with a deep,
dark-purple throat. If you find any, keep the little
ones from touching it, but don’t pull it up, for it is so
rare, that botanists think a specimen a great prize, and
lament if they find it gone from the spot where it once
was known.
Even more rare than the henbane, and still more
poisonous, is the dwale, or deadly nightshade, which
has its Latin name Atropa from one of the three Fates,
124
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
who, as the ancient Greeks believed, spun the thread
of human life. Atropos, the one from whom this
deadly plant is named, was the third, who held the
shears which cut off the thread when it had come to
its full length.
Every now and then we hear of some poor little
child who has been so carelessly watched as to be
allowed to eat the dark-purple berries of the night¬
shade, which have a sweetish taste, and thus tempt it
on to its own destruction, for one alone is sufficient to
produce a fatal stupor and heaviness, which are almost
sure to end in death.
Poison-fruits seem to be placed in this world in order
to put us in mind of temptation and sin, which allure us
at first, and then destroy us. We may almost feel sure
that the earth brought forth no poison before sin had
entered into the world, and death by sin.
Do you observe, too, that the birds and other ani¬
mals never poison themselves with wild fruits, it is
oidy children that ever do so. This is because God
has given the creatures instinct which guards them
from even desiring what would hurt them, whereas He
has given us reason to conquer our desires when they
would lead us to our own injury. I believe, too, that
no child, who has not a habit of pampering its taste
and craving after things, not because it is hungry, but
only because it is greedy, will ever be in much danger
of being tempted by these wild, unwholesome-looking
fruits.
The dwale is very uncommon. I have only once
seen a plant of it. It was growing on an old bridge ;
it was very tall and branching, reaching some way
above the parapet, with a quantity of light green downy
leaves, and a profusion of dark, dull, reddish-purple,
MORE PENTAGON FLOWERS.
125
bell-shaped blossoms, such a plant as no one could
ever mistake after having once met with a description
of it.
This is the real deadly nightshade, a different plant
from the woody nightshade, which is much more com¬
mon and less dangerous. This last has shining red
berries, drooping, and of a very pretty form. They
would make you very sick and giddy lor some days if
you were to eat them, but would probably not kill you,
unless you were very weakly. It grows on heaps of
rubbish, and by way-sides. It is a small plant, with
heart-shaped leaves, and very pretty flowers, the co¬
rolla purple, and what is called deflected, or turned
back, so that the yellow stamens, which are all gather¬
ed together in one, with the pistil like a point, in the
middle projecting forwards, like the boss on an ancient
shield, while the corolla and calyx lavish all their care
upon the germ behind them. The garden nightshade
is almost exactly like it, but the flower is white, and
the berries purple.
There are several other plants formed like the woody
nightshade. There is the pretty American cowslip,
with its trim, fair lilac blossoms, nodding round its
slender stem, not very like a cowslip, to be sure ; but
as it grows in its own country, in the long grass, and
blows in early spring, I suppose it put the first settlers
in Canada in mind of the yellow cowslips they had left
at home ; and when their children trotted up to their
log huts, with hands full of these pretty flowers, as
their own used to be of the cowslips in their own
native village, they liked to call them by the same
friendly old name, bringing back, perhaps, the remem¬
brance of playfellows who had been cowslip-gatherers
with them in the old country.
126
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Another plant with lilac deflected corolla and pro¬
jecting yellow stamens, was imported from America
three hundred years ago, by an English knight. It
has fibrous roots, with tubers at the knots ; large, com¬
pound, wrinkled leaves ; and the fruit is a dark-pur¬
plish berry.
This knight planted these curiosities on his estate
in Ireland, and there left them, telling his servants
that they would be very good food. In due time they
budded, the lilac flowers opened and faded, and the
green berries became dark. The servants tasted them,
and soon found them both nauseous and unwholesome,
so they dug up the roots and threw them away ; but
when the master returned, he made inquiry for them,
searched, and found some still alive, which he caused
to be planted, explaining that it was the root instead
of the fruit that was good to eat.
And so it proved, the root was found to be excel¬
lent, the culture was improved, and care made the
plant grow better and produce more and larger tubers,
till at last this American root became the chief food
of the inhabitants of Ireland, and few persons in Eng¬
land like to make a dinner without it. The French
call this excellent root the apple of the earth ; we give
it a name something like the Indian word it was called
by when first brought from South America, and what
that is I am sure you have guessed by this time, as
well as who was the knight who brought it home.
The reason why the berries of the potatoe are un-
wholsesome is, that they partake of the nature of the
Solan um, or woody nightshade, the whole of which race
are more or less poisonous. You know that very little
use is made of the potatoe berry, even for seed. It is
only now and then sown, when people wish to pro-
MORE PENTAGON FLOWERS.
127
duce some new variety ; and the plant is propagated
from what is called the eye, the little black spots which
we see in the tubers, or, as we are more used to call¬
ing them, the potatoes. I believe that in fact what we
eat are not roots at all, the roots being only the long
stringy net-work of fibres that go so deep into the
ground, and that the tuber is really a sort of under¬
ground stem, protecting, in a fleshy nest, the young
buds which are to bear leaves and blossoms in the next
year. The eye, then, is the bud, which, when planted,
with a sufficient quantity of the tuber to afford it
nourishment through the winter, will grow, and in the
summer put forth leaves above and fibres beneath,
which will in due time form more tubers. Thus you
see that Providence has provided food for us, at the
same time as for the plentiful increase of the plant.
Potatoe grounds are a very pretty country sight, with
their regular ridge and furrow, and the long ranks of
plants growing so evenly, with their rich green bend¬
ing foliage, and the white or lilac flowers hanging
four or five together on their slender stems ; indeed,
the flower is in itself so pretty, that I think the
plant would be grown for its beauty, even if it was
of no use.
Autumn, too, brings a very pleasant sight, when the
stout men and boys go to work, digging deep in the
ridges, which stand up so neat and trim before them,
while behind all is trodden down flat ; and their prongs
and forks bring up a whole net of fibres, with the
brown lumps hanging among them ; and there are the
women behind with great gloves and knives, or spuds,
clearing off the fibres, throwing away the old dry
haulm, and scraping off the rich brown earth, then,
as the potatoes come out, tumbling them into the sack
128
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
or barrow, to be wheeled off to the winter’s store, often
a droll little thatched burrow in the field. Funny
things are those potatoes, brown, yellow, or red, and
of such comical shapes, especially pigs’ potatoes, like
strings of beads, and now and then in clusters almost
like a little man with a little round head, and two legs.
They have odd names, too, according to the varieties,
which are very different according to the soil. Some
places are so much less favourable to their goodness
than others, that the best potatoes degenerate in them
after the first year, and the seed (the eye, that is to
say,) has continually to be renewed from the more
suitable soil. Thus London is supplied with potatoes
grown in Yorkshire, and of which the seed is brought
every year from Scotland. Some parts of Cornwall,
and the Channel Isles, are also regions where the
potatoe thrives, and is better than elsewhere.
Ireland is, however, its great home, and it is only
within the last hundred years that the cultivation has
spread so universally in England. It had so become
the poor man’s food that it is hard to think how people
lived without it; and for many years it seemed the
most certain of all crops ; but some years ago, as
almost the youngest reader can remember, came a
warning that our own skill, labour, and foresight, can
never secure us from famine, and that it is God alone
who can give or withhold our daily food.
The tall flourishing green haulm of the potatoes,
which had been finer than ever that year, began to
shrivel and turn black, a sickly unwholesome smell
spread over the gardens, and in a few weeks every
plant was but brown withered stalks ; then the mis¬
chief spread to the roots, and the whole promise of the
year was turned to blight and decay. There was
MORE PENTAGON FLOWERS.
129
scarcely a cottage that did not suffer more or less, or
where the children did not leave their dinner scarcely
satisfied ; and in poor Ireland, there was starvation
and misery such as, thank heaven, we never saw, and
can scarcely conceive.
Then came the Fast Day, which bade us mourn for
the sins which had brought wrath upon us, and pray
that God would again bless our basket and our store ;
and then in Ilis mercy we received an abundant har¬
vest of corn, while the potatoes, though not free from
disease, were far more healthy than in the past year.
Then, did we remember to give thanks with our whole
hearts ? And have we since remembered the resolu¬
tions we made in the time of our fear and distress ?
Since that first year, though the potatoes have never
been quite free from disease, they have not been so
much touched as at first ; and, besides the training in
giving up to others, and denying ourselves, which
doubtless the year of distress brought to some, it taught
prudent people not to rely so entirely on it as a certain
crop, but to grow other things that may be used in case
the potatoe should fail.
Besides these, we have the tall yellow loose strife,
with its shining yellow spikes, by the river side ; and
its pretty trailing brother, the moneywort, with leaves
in pairs, and polished yellow blossoms, creeping on the
moist hedge-bank in long wreaths, which are ready¬
made garlands for little girls’ heads ; and a third kind,
the yellow pimpernel, with thin leaves, and bright
golden stars of blossom. Then conies the true pimper¬
nel, the shepherd’s weather-glass. Bright little thing,
one of the three scarlet flowers of sober England, does
not everyone know it, and like it, even though we must
call it a weed ? Surely it may grow under currant bushes,
9
130
TIIE HEItB OF TIIE FIELD.
and among cabbages without offence, though it must be
turned out of our flower-beds. Its Latin name, Ana-
gallis, means laughing, and certainly it does laugh in
the sunshine, which it loves so much that it shuts up
its leaves not only in the evening on cloudy days, but
when there is rain in the air — little weather-wise thing.
Its blossoms are on long slender stems, and its round
urns of capsules turn down to the earth to ripen the
fruit. The stamens are covered with a beautiful soft
down, and the leaves grow in pairs. Sometimes you
may find a pimpernel exactly like this in everything
except that the corolla is of a rich deep blue. We had
one single plant in our kitchen-garden some ten or
twelve years ago, which Ave thought a great prize. Now
its descendants have spread all over that part of the
garden, and sometimes, from the pollen of the scarlet
and blue getting mixed, as I suppose, there come up
pale lilac pimpernels, not so pretty, but curious. A
third kind of these laughing flowers, is found in Avet
places, the delicate bog pimpernel, white, striped with
pink, growing in long trailing wreaths, Avith little round
leaves in pairs. A large handsome sort, very rich
blue, looking like my OAvn blue pimpernel magnified, is
groAvn in gardens, by its company name of Anagallis.
The doAvny stamens are found again in the mullein
tribe, very Avoolly plants in general, leaves and all so
covered with down, that they are sometimes called poor
man’s flannel, and the yellow blossoms in tall single
spikes. The great white mullein has leaves nearly
white with down, white furry stamens and red anthers ;
the black mullein is likeAvise yelloAv floAvered, but the
doAvn on the filaments is purple ; the moth mullein is
the prettiest of all, Avith yellow butterfly-like blossoms
on a loose spike. It is often found in gardens, some¬
times, though rarely, Avild.
131
CHAPTER XVII.
CLASS Y. — CURRANTS AND CLIMBERS.
I hope you are not tired of pentagon flowers, for we
are not by any means at the end of them. The pen¬
tagon or cinquefoil, is the most graceful of mathe¬
matical figures, and that which looks most beautiful in
architecture, as we see it so often in the tracery of the
heads of church windows ; and thus it seems, as if
Nature had adopted it, as the most ordinary, and, as it
were, standard form of those of her productions, which,
above all others, unite regularity of shape with beauty
of colouring.
See, as an especial instance of this union, that ex¬
quisite garden-flower, the Phlox Drummondii, with its
shape as regular as the periwinkle, and its markings
varying in width and in tint, from narrow borders to
wide streaks, from pale delicate pink to the deepest
crimson “freaked with jet,” yet never failing in all
their varieties to keep to that one principle of the
regular five-sided figure. It is a hardy flower, and
will, no doubt, soon be more common than it is as
yet, for it was only in 1838 that it was first grown
in England, from seeds brought from Texas, by Mr.
Drummond, from whom it is named. Or, look at the
regular pentagons of the Gilia tricolour, its yellow
throat, trimmed with a clear, distinct, dark-brown line,
and its grey shaded corolla, all its divisions so equal
and distinct in form and colour.
132
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
These all have divided corollas, like the primrose
and periwinkle ; others have equally regular pentagonal
corollas like the campanula, but undivided, only marked
at the angles by a sort of groove or fold. The largest
of these is the great datura or thorn apple, with its
bell-like white blossom ; and its hot-house companion,
the deep orange- coloured datura. The prettiest and
best known are the convolvuli or bindweed. These
beautiful flowers spread nearly all over the world, and
the English kinds, as usual, are as graceful and elegant,
though less sliOAvy than their foreign cousins.
Of all the fair things in the world, what is more
lovely than our great white bindweed, its twining
wreaths of heart-shaped leaves and delicate white
flowers, their buds so gracefully rolled and folded in
that tapering form? Nothing gives a greater sense of
purity than those stainless flowers, in the midst of their
green bowers, looking as if it was a sort of cruelty to
touch or injure anything so exquisitely beautiful and
delicate, that a breath will almost soil it, and if gather¬
ed, in a few moments it is a melancholy, crushed, faded
thing. It is like the driven snow, too pure to bear the
taint of man’s touch.
The little pink bindwreed is one of our prettiest
flowers ; the five deep lines that mark its divisions
almost always white, while the space between them
blushes to every shade of pink, according to the place
in which it grows ; if in the sunshine, it is almost
white ; if in the shade, the colour is bright and deep ;
always beautiful, however, wutli its twining spiring
stems. It is a pity that, beautiful as it is, it must, like
other good things, when they get into unfit places, be
often considered as a weed, and rooted up. We cannot
suffer it to creep about our neat paths, or fetter our
CURRANTS AND CLIMBERS.
133
choice plants, any more than we can or ought to allow
our healthful play to take up the time that ought to be
spent on our useful employments.
Equally frail, and still prettier, is the flower which
the French call “the beauty of the day,” and we the
Convolvulus minor, that blue, white, and yellow bell,
blossoming in the morning, and fading by sunset,
closing up too, on cloudy days, as if it felt the change
to our grey sky, from its own sunny clime on the
Mediterranean shores. It grows near the ground, and
does not climb, as does our other common garden Con¬
volvulus, the major, which delights to twist about a
trellis-work, or wind round a pole. It is an East-
Indian plant, and therefore requires care ; but in its
native home its flowers can be open but a very short
time, for they cannot even bear the heat of our own
July sun. The most curious and beautiful quality of
this species is, that the same plant bears blossoms of
every variety of colour ; some deep intense violet, with
red veins ; others pink, or purple, veined with white ;
others again quite white, with the divisions purple.
Many, and many more, are the kinds scattered over
other countries, growing to great size and beauty in the
tropical lands, where the humming-bird glances among
their bells, and the tailor-bird sews their leaves together
with long flakes of cotton, to shield the nest containing
its tiny eggs ; some few have been brought to England,
but none except the splendid Mexican Ipomea, and the
black-eyed Tliunbergia, are much known.
Closely related to the bindweeds, is a very strange
plant, which you may find on the common, the dodder.
Do you know it ? Queer, red, stringy thing ! creeping
about on the furze and heath, binding them down by a
close, hard network of its fibres, without root, without
134
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
leaf, only with these twisting stems, bearing white
blossoms in little round balls, like some of the aggre¬
gate flowers of the fourth class. If you can find it, you
will be much amused with its strange appearance, and
probably it will entice you to get your fingers well
pricked with the furze on which it hangs, not feeding
on it, however, but nourished by air and dew.
Then come the intensely blue gentians, the dwellers
on the heights of the Alpine mountains, and on wild
boggy heaths, in all countries ; their blue, from its ex¬
treme depth, though of so much darker a shade, re¬
minding us more of the unsearchableness of the sky
above than any other colour I know.
The starry pentagon flower of the centaury, with its
delicate pink tint, comes next, and of all English plants,
I think it is the earliest in going to bed, for even before
our afternoon’s walk is finished, its pink blossoms have
drawn in their five points, and folded closely up, not to
open till the sun wakes them next morning.
Here, too, comes the honeysuckle, or woodbine, far
from a regular flower, though constant to the rule of
five. Delightful honeysuckle ! a dweller indeed by our
paths and homes, and a constant long-enduring friend ;
its stem becoming hard wood, and growing on and on,
till perhaps generation after generation have been born
and died within the house where it spreads and luxuri¬
ates, and the children who have gathered its fragrant
blossoms have grown old, still owning it as an un¬
changed part of their home.
A constant, early, hardy friend it is, its twin leaves
coming out, first of all, even in the midst of winter,
bringing cheerful promise of spring, and hanging on the
bare boughs through many a return of cold and storm,
bearing the chill crystals of hoar-frost as merrily as if
CURRANTS AND CLIMBERS.
335
they were but dewdrops of a summer morning. A
constant friend indeed, as many a hazel stick can testify,
so constant that it becomes part of the very wood itself,
actually one with it, assuming the same bark, and giving
it a strange twisted, whorled appearance, as if a snake
had twined round it. Most boys have met with these
twisted sticks, and in that case the friendship has gene¬
rally ended in the death of both, for who could resist
cutting such a precious walking-stick, unless, indeed, it
was in a wood where such cutting was forbidden?
Wild honeysuckles are almost all white outside, with
the interior of a pale glazy cream colour ; those which
are cultivated are as universally red on the outside, but
they are both of the same species, and alike in all the
main points, such as the long, pin-like pistil, the five
slender stamens, the corolla with its very long throat,
the little drop of perfumy nectar at the bottom, and the
top deeply cut into two divisions, one long, and thread¬
like, the other broad, and notched into four scallops, so
as to keep up the pentagon character. Then look at
the bud, how the wide part is doubled down, and the
slender linear division closes down over it, with a red
edge marking its form, buds and fully opened blossoms
all standing in graceful, bending, diverging positions on
the common receptacle, guarded a little way down by
leaves embracing the stem, one of the most elegant, the
sweetest, and most charming of all our plants. The
fruit is a red, glossy berry, which you may often find in
clusters in the winter.
Another irregular flower is the Balsam, once deemed
so medicinal that the very name implies something
healing ; though now it is only an ornament for our
gardens and hot-houses. You remember that the
violet is a pentagon flower, and you will soon see that
136
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
the form of the balsam is nearly similar, except that
the petals are more irregular, and instead of the short
blunt spur of the violet, it. has quite a long sharply-
pointed curly tail. There is one English sort, and a
very funny fellow it is, with yellow long spurred
flowers, and capsides so irritable, that the moment they
are touched their little valves fly open, as if by a
spring, and curl themselves up, while the seeds pop out
with a bounce, and scatter themselves in all directions.
For this reason it is called in English, the Touch-me-
not, and in Latin, the Impatiens No li-ine- tang ere, which
means the same thing. Though English, this hasty
gentleman, or rather lady, for in some places it is called
Jumping Betty, is not very frequent, and the only place
where I ever saw it growing wild, was on the side of
a deep ravine in which the streamlet winds along which
forms the cascade of Stock Gill Force at Ambleside.
It is often, however, grown in gardens, as well as its
almost equally impatient Levantine cousin, the purple
balsam, a tall handsome plant, with purple flowers, and
stems tinged with red, the leaves growing in pairs at
the joints. The red-and- white balsam grown in hot¬
beds, and nursed in drawing-rooms, is, I believe, a
Cochin Chinese.
The next division of the class pentandria, have their
five seeds enclosed in a bag of pulpy matter, which fur¬
nishes excellent food both for man and bird. Ivy,
which we spoke of before, is one of those of which we
are willing to leave the birds full and free possession ;
but we are not quite so willing to give them a share of
the fruits of the genus called Bibes, for this genus in¬
cludes our gooseberries and currants.
All of this race have hard woody shrubby stems, and
for the most part very elegantly-formed leaves, not
CURRANTS AND CLIMBERS.
137
unlike some ivy leaves in form, and what botanists call
pinnate, that is to say, with wings, or projections on
each side ; but constant to their regular rule, these
leaves have five points : they are apt to be a good deal
furrowed and wrinkled, and the edges jagged.
Some of the American species have such bright-
coloured blossoms, that they are grown only for their
beauty, the American currant being of a very pretty
pink, and the American gooseberry of a splendid deep
crimson. On examination, however, you will find that
these fine colours reside entirely in the calyx ; the
corolla is a poor little white thing, like a narrow white
border round the stamens and pistil, and this is still
more the case with our English gooseberry and currant
blossoms, where the corolla is so small that it is hard
to find it at all, it is only a sort of little scale within
the calyx, which in the gooseberry is reddish-brown —
in the currant whitish -green. It is superior , that is to
say, growing above the germ. This, even before the
blossom is over, is quite a trim-looking little green
gooseberry. In the currant it is, of course, much
smaller, and not hairy. In both species it remains on
the fruit without falling off, as all may remember
who have helped to top and tail gooseberries for a
tart.
No one need be put in mind of another difference
between currant and gooseberry bushes, that the first
are gentle harmless bushes, whereas the others have
fierce long sharp spikes, that make merciless scratches
on the hands that come to rob them of their sweet fruit,
whether it be stored in large smooth green bags, or in
little dark-red hairy ones. However, there is a reward
at the end of the scratching and tearing, for most people
will agree in admiration of a gooseberry tart, and still
138
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
more of gooseberry fool. Do you know the reason of
that name ? I assure you, in spite of the goose at one
end, and the fool at the other, it has nothing to do with
folly, and is only a corruption of the French word foule,
which means crushed ; and as to the word gooseberry,
that is derived in a still more curious way. You know
Midsummer-day is the feast of St. John the Baptist,
and as the fruit comes just at that time, the Germans
called it St. John’s berries, in their language Johannes
heeren. This was shortened into Jansbeeren, then into
Ganzbeeren ; and as gans is the German for goose, we
English, adopting the name from our neighbours, learnt
to call them gooseberries.
Both gooseberries and currants are native plants,
and have only been brought to perfection by diligent
cultivation ; and in this the miners, colliers, and iron
workers of the north and midland counties have had a
great share, taking great pains and pride in nursing
new varieties in their little gardens. They have shows
every year, and prizes for the largest fruit, such as a
copper tea-kettle or a pair of sugar-tongs.
The largest gooseberry ever raised was exhibited in
1825, and weighed 31 dwts. 16 grs. troy weight; in¬
deed, no doubt its grower thought it worth its weight
in gold. The sorts of gooseberries have very odd
names, which remind us to whom we owe them — such
as “ the old ironmonger,” “the jolly miner,” and with
less reason, “ the roaring lion.”
Nothing has more fragrant leaves than the black
currant, and how good its fruit is, either in the pud¬
dings which send children to school with purple lips, or
in the jam which is so refreshing in a feverish cold.
How pretty is the red currant, with its bright shining
scarlet clusters peeping out from the leaves, most es-
CURRANTS AND CUMBERS.
139
pecially pretty when trained against a house ; and as to
the white, with the transparent skin showing the seeds
like pebbles in a clear stream, I think there are few
fruits so beautiful to the eye.
The currants, which are brought from the isles of
Zante and Cephalonia, and put into cakes and puddings,
are not of the genus Ribes, but are in fact little grapes.
They seem to have the best right to the name of cur¬
rants, which is a corruption of Corinth, and I suppose
the fact is, that our native fruit was named after them,
as there is a good deal of resemblance. They are
borne by little vines clipped, and made to grow like our
currant bushes ; the fruit is of a beautiful deep purple,
with a bloom like a grape on the fruit, without the
shrivelled calyx worn by the Ribes, and not containing
seeds. They are laid out in heaps on cloths to dry in
the sun, packed in boxes, and come here to meet us
at our festival times, in christening-cakes, in wedding-
cakes, in mince-pies, and especially in those fine large
penny buns, which come out in great baskets at school
feasts, all brown and fresh, with those purple spots of
currants, looking so tempting, that the little ones are
sure to pick them out as the first taste of the great
solid bun, that at first seems enough to choke a small
creature, though at the end of ten minutes, you will
probably see nothing left but crumbs, unless a piece is
going to be kept for some smaller brother or sister who
does not yet come to school, and has cried to be at the
feast. “ To pick out a plum ” from our own cake has
been perfectly allowable ever since the days when little
Jack Horner sat in the corner, and said, “What a good
boy am I,” though after all, the wisest way in cake¬
eating, as in other things, is to take the sweet and solid
together, instead of leaving the last to seem dull and
140
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
dreary ; but in the case of the cake not being our own,
remember that we must “ keep our hands from pick¬
ing” as well as stealing, and that one currant out
of a cake has many a time been the first step in dis¬
honesty and evil of all kinds, to a girl who might have
been trusted with anything when first she went out to
service.
From the little grape of Corinth we come to the real
grape vine, and the grandest of all the climbers, with
its rich foliage — those splendid leaves of that beautiful
pinnate form, that fine deep colour, and gracefully-cut
edge, those long spiral tendrils twisting and clinging
so beautifully, its clusters of blossoms like little green
stars, inferior , that is, beneath the pulpy germ — which
is in time to become such magnificent fruit, either green
or purple.
We have all seen vines, and even in our northern
climate they are noble-looking things, covering the wall
with their handsome leaves, nestling round windows,
spreading their long arms round chimneys, and some¬
times reaching along a whole row of houses, though
their roots may be only in some dry, dusty road-side,
where it is difficult to imagine that they can find any
nourishment ; but the root is long, and grows deep,
beyond the upper surface of things, and the main stem,
with its rough, ever-changing, and cracking bark, lives
to a great age, so great that it is said that the time of a
vine’s perfection is its fiftieth year.
Vines in the open air bear tolerable fruit, but if we
wish to see grapes in perfection, we must go into a hot¬
house, and look up at the noble clusters hanging over¬
head, curtained by their leaves, and their tint softened
by that fragile shade called the bloom, which consists
in reality of a number of extremely minute scales of
CURRANTS AND CLIMBERS.
141
wax. Nothing is more luxuriant than a grand bunch
of grapes, on their infinitely branched stems, hanging
prone with their weight, and so thick and multitudi¬
nous that branch after branch may be cut away with
their rich burthen, and yet scarcely be missed.
English wine is, however, not worth making ; the
sun of the south is needed to ripen grapes sufficiently
for the purpose, and that which is here used comes
from France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany, the in¬
habitants of other southern countries only making
enough for themselves, and drinking it as commonly
as we drink beer. On the Mediterranean coast of
Spain are grown those grapes which are sent to us in
a dried state, and which we call raisins, or in a pud¬
ding, plums ; indeed, in some places a plum-pudding is
called a figgy pudding. This puts us in mind of Christ¬
mas, too, when the grocers give their regular customers
a present of raisins, so that even the poorest, if they
are tolerable managers, and do not get into debt, may
have their plum-pudding.
The southern countries of Europe are the places for
vineyards. Sometimes the vines are cut short like
gooseberry-bushes, or trained closely round short poles,
trimmed, and set at regular intervals, they are stretched
out, like espaliers on rods, a few feet from the ground.
In other places they reach from one pole to another on
trellises, and they hang down, looking very graceful
and beautiful ; but they look best festooned from tree
to tree, or over the front of a white-washed cottage,
wreathed round its balcony, or trained on a trellis so as
to afford a shade round some cool deep well, or on a
narrow ledge of earth, on the sunny side of some Al¬
pine hill, where they hang down and cover the rugged
rock-side with their verdant foliage.
142
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
The vintage is a beautiful sight in these countries —
the men cutting down the clusters, and the women and
girls carrying them away in baskets on their heads to
the wine-press, where they are trodden, with the bare
feet, to squeeze out the juice. The fermentation by
which it becomes wine, frees it from all impurities, but
it then has to wait a long time before it can be used,
and the older the wine the better it is. At Xeres, in
Spain — the name which we have made into Sherry —
there is one cask of wine of age and strength beyond
all reckoning, which is called “the mother” of Sherry,
and each cask which is exported receives a small
portion from this venerable and powerful lady, the
quantity taken out being supplied from the next eldest
cask, which is also extremely old, though not equal to
the mother.
The ancient Greeks set a great value on the vine,
and made a god of the Indian conqueror, Bacchus,
who was said to have introduced it to them. They
represented him with a crown of vine leaves, and
honoured him as much as Ceres, the goddess of corn,
but there was much frightful evil in their worship of
him, for they had feasts named Bacchanalia, where,
calling intoxication a sacred frenzy, they ran about
committing every sort of wild and extravagant action.
We look upon the vine with great honour, and with
better reason. We do not value it only for its grace
and beauty, and for the precious fruit it bears, though
even in this way we own in it one of God’s best gifts.
That Judea was a land of vines — a land of plenty, of
corn and wine — a land where a man might dwell beneath
his own vine — where the grapes were such as the spies
brought to Moses — all this we are told to show how
choice a land she was in her prosperity, ere she was
CURRANTS AND CLIMBERS.
143
blighted by the curse of her children’s wickedness.
When also Jacob wished to heap to the utmost, so that
the power of language seemed to fail him, the blessings
of heaven upon the crown of the head of him that was
separate from his brethren, he called him a fruitful
bough — “ a fruitful bough by a well.” The wife of the
good man in the Psalm is “ as the fruitful vine,” and,
all through the Old Testament, the vine stands first for
beauty and value.
The chosen people themselves were the vineyard of
the Lord of Hosts — He brought them from Egypt, cast
out the heathen, and planted them, hedged them about
with His presence, and looked for them to bring forth
fruits. But, alas ! what did they bring forth ? And,
therefore, the hedge was broken down, and the degene¬
rate vine is rooted up by the wild boar out of the forest !
Nay, He was cast out of the vineyard and slain, when
He came to His own, seeking fruit, and finding none ;
He hath trodden the wine-press in His wrath, and hath
avenged the honour of His Name.
And hath He not planted another vine in a very
fruitful hill? Yea, hath He not even declared that He
Himself is that very Vine, the Branch of the stem of
Jesse, the true faithful bough, once sorely wounded ;
and are not we the branches of a wild stock, grafted
in to enjoy the benefit of the sap which sustains the
whole ? Oh ! let us fear either not to bring forth fruit
at all, or wild fruit, such as an ungrafted wild nature
might bear ; let us strive with all our might to bring
forth precious fruit, of love, joy, and peace ; and let us
bear it with patience, should the Husbandman prune
the branches that they may bring forth more fruit.
“ Even from the flower till the grape is ripe,” let us
seek to make our fruit precious by following after the
144
TIIE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
true wisdom, for let us remember that Pie who sought
the vintage from Judea will seek it again, and that
even more terrible will Pie appear in His dyed gar¬
ments, red in His apparel, when He shall come again
to tread the wine-press alone, and to trample His ene¬
mies in His fury.
Yet it is not only by a similitude that the vine is the
most honoured of plants, high as is that similitude. It
shares with corn in the highest honour of all, one of
which I scarcely feel willing to write, lest you should
not read with reverence. So I will leave off here, only
putting you in mind that when you hear of corn and
wine, or see carved out in wood or stone, wreaths of
wheat ears and vine leaves, it often means more than
the mere token of temporal plenty and prosperity, and
may put us in mind of the true sustenance of the life
of a Christian soul.
CHAPTER XYIPL
CLASS V. — THE ELM TREE.
In the fifth class, we shall find the second in rank
among our English trees, the noble spreading elm.
It will be a good opportunity for telling you a little
about the wonders of the construction of trees, and
indeed of almost all plants with woody stems. I sup¬
pose you would tell me that the trunk of a tree consists
of only two parts, the wood, namely, and its rough
great coat, the bark. And this is in some sense true,
as we might say that we have flesh, covered with skin,
but our flesh is full of numerous little vessels, and
minute parts ; and in the same way the wood of the
THE ELM TREE.
145
tree is of far more wonderful structure than you or I
should ever have guessed.
In the first place, recollect how the end of a stick
looks when freshly cut and polished off very smoothly,
as boys like to do when they have a good sharp knife.
There is a little pale spot in the middle, which, by the
help of a magnifying glass, is shown to be of a soft
spongy substance. This is the pith, and it serves to
nourish the infant leaves, when they have not yet
broken from their hard coverings, and are too young to
obtain their support from the air and moisture.
Outside the pith is the wood, which is arranged in
rings, one without the other. These rings grow darker
towards the centre ; and the inner and darker ones are
called the heart- wood, while the outer ones are called
the sap-wood. The age of the tree is reckoned by the
number of the rings, as it forms a fresh circle of sap-
wood every year, and at the same time the innermost
ring of the sap-wood turns into heart-wood.
This heart-wood is the main strength and firmness
of the tree ; the sap-wood that which carries on the
business of life, for through it the sap rises in the
spring to support the buds and leaves. Through it, I
say, for both kinds of wood are, in fact, composed of
an infinity of very small tubes or pipes, through the
hollow of which the sap mounts in the outer rings, while
the inner ones are filled with a hard solid substance,
which was originally formed in the leaves.
Across the wood you may see a number of little
pale fine lines, diverging from the centre, not regularly,
but interrupted and broken. Perhaps they are most
distinct in the oak-tree. These are called the medullary
rays, that is, the rays of marrow, and serve to conduct
to the centre of the stem the sap which has mounted
10
146
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
through the sap-wood, which having travelled out to
the ends of the leaves, descends through the bark.
This is a long account, but it is so wonderful that it
would be a pity not in some degree to enter into it, so
I will just tell it to you once more, so as to show you
how the sap of a tree has a circulation like that of the
blood in our bodies.
First, it is sucked in from the earth by the roots ;
then it mounts through the hollow tubes of the sap-
wood, which conduct it to the extreme end of every
branch and twig ; then it turns and comes back again,
together with the food the leaves have been gathering
from the air and rain, through the vessels of the bark,
parting on the way with some portion which goes
through the medullary rays to feed the pith, and till up
the tubes of the solid heart-wood in the middle. So
you see that every branch of the tree derives its sup¬
port from its union with the rest, and you know of
what that should remind us. We hear of sap rising in
the spring, the time chosen for felling trees, because
the quantity of moisture makes it easier to strip off the
bark. Now, the sap is always present; but as soon as
warm weather comes, and the buds swell, they call for
more to feed them, and what was at rest in the
branches flows into them ; the branches demand a sup¬
ply from the sap-wood, the sap-wood draws upon the
root, and by-and-bye, the whole begins to return by
way of the bark. Cold will check all this, and it used
to be thought that the sap went up by the bark, and
down by the wood, but this has been shown to be
wrong. A French botanist, in order to make sure, in
the midst of a sudden frost, cut down a large poplar, a
yard from the ground, and found the stump dry, while
the upper part dropped with sap ; another rising takes
THE ELM TREE.
147
place to feed the midsummer shoot, which brightens
the foliage in middle age, with tender red and green.
When a tree growls old, decay generally begins
from within, but as the circulation chiefly depends on
the outer portions, we often see hollow trees with
plenty of green leaves, though they have so little sap-
wood, or wood of any kind, that it is hard to guess
how they stand at all. What famous play-places for
children those hollow trees make, and what capital
nests do the owls and woodpeckers find in them ! An
old hollow tree is apt to be a perfect store-house of de¬
lights for lovers of insects, and lovers of birds, and
lovers of mosses and lichens, aye, and for lovers of
merry children too, who like to hear the screams of
good-humoured play, as the small people jump out of
their hiding-place, or make the smooth inside a castle
or cottage, peculiarly their own, for enjoying their own
little secrets, and keeping their hoards of pretty stones
and pebbles.
You can now perceive why it is so important in car¬
pentering, to cut the wood the right way, lengthways,
that is to say, so as to break into as few as possible of
the little tubes. If cut the cross way, all the tops of the
tubes would be cut open, and laid bare, so as to let the
minute drops of damp trickle into them, and cause
decay ; besides, it is much smoother to go along with the
tubes. The grain of the wood, and the different pat¬
terns on boards, are caused by the rings of the heart-
wood, the larger ones being innermost, and nearest the
centre.
Now, then, for the elm itself.
In March and April you may see its branches thickly
covered with clusters of small dark brown blossoms,
and when you can get a near view of them, you will
148
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
find that these are small greenish brown cups, containing
five red stamens and two styles, growing out of a little
round germ ; but the seed is not apt to ripen, and the
tree usually propagates itself by throwing up suckers
from the root.
The leaves are small, egg-shaped, and serrated, the
bark rough, though of a finer grain than the oak, and
less apt to be overgrown with moss and lichen. The
wood is not so hard nor so enduring as oak, and though
it is very useful for many purposes, the especial value
of the tree is rather in its life-time, than after it is cut
down. I low delightful is the cool shade of a lane shut
in on either side with hedge-row elms, those firm
grand arms of theirs reaching out and embracing, far
over head — hedge-row elms, I mean, allowed to grow
to their proper form and beauty, not trimmed close,
and deprived of all their fine long branches, as they
are in some of our counties, where they look more like
tall Jacks-in-tlie-Green, than like the fair spreading
elmin tree.
Or think of a church-yard bordered round with elms,
casting their quiet shadow on the graves around, and
perhaps over a clear streamlet, fencing it in on one
side, and dividing it from the fresh green meadows
beyond, the sun -light making its way through the thick
leaves, and falling in patches on the grass and water,
and the old grey walls of the church, and quivering
and moving about so pleasantly when the wind shakes
the branches. What a fair peaceful spot it is ! closed
in from all the world, and those noble trees making a
sort of outer church, with pillars and arches, where the
thoughts of the living may be sobered, and where the
dead rest within the shadow of the church.
Or how pleasant it is to see some park, the green-
THE ELM TREE.
149
sward shaded by tall elms, in threes, or pairs,
sheltering the cattle on hot sunny days, and in early
spring loaded with the multitudinous nests of noisy
rooks. Rooks like elms much better than any other
tree, and their black satin coats and hoarse chattering
voices seldom fail where these trees are numerous, as
in the spring they fight over the sticks they carry to
build their nests. In the summer they teach their black
children to fly, before they can feed themselves, and in
autumn and winter fly circling round and round in the
air collecting for an evening assembly, and evidently
having a friendly conversation on the best fields for
grubs and chaffers, before going to roost, like large
black fruit on the elm trees.
Grandest and best of all is the elm tree, when it
stands alone in its pride, its magnificent trunk rising
like a column, and stretching out its protecting arms
all round, like a monarch in charge of the country.
Elm trees grow very fast, but they live very long, and
some of these fine single elms are recorded to be of
a great age. There was one at Gisors, on the frontier
of Normandy, where the kings of France and dukes of
Normandy used to hold conferences together, and
which was large enough to shelter both their trains.
It was more than two hundred years old when it was
cut down by King Philippe Auguste, out of hatred to
our Plantagenet kings. At the first French revolution,
a great many fine old elms were cut down, which bore
the name of King Henri IV. (who died in the year
1610.) He had planted many with his own hand, and
had recommended the planting of many others round
church-yards, and to form avenues at the entrance of
towns.
The first elm-trees in Spain were taken thither
150
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
from England by Philip II., who planted them near
his palace of the Escurial ; and at the beautiful
Moorish Grenada, in the midst of all the glowing
sunshine and southern beauty, the English traveller is
surprised to find himself in an alley of over-arching
elms, green and shady as those in the lanes of his own
home.
Queen Elizabeth was a planter of trees, and the
oldest elm known to exist in England is a stump at
Richmond, now fenced in and covered with ivy, which
was planted by her hand, and therefore has always
been known by the name of the Queen’s elm.
The most interesting of all our English elms is, how¬
ever, one which still stands near the entrance to the
passage leading to Spring Gardens, for it is that one on
which King Charles looked as he was going to his mar¬
tyrdom, saying, “ That tree was planted by my brother
Henry,” that brother, the remembrance of whose boyish
days might well
“ Haunt him in no vexing mood,
When all the cares of life were over.”
There is another kind of English elm with broader
leaves, called the Wych elm, and another sort proper
only to Scotland, where our English elm was not
known till after the union of the two kingdoms.
351
CHAPTER XIX.
CLASS V. — UMBRELLA FLOWERS.
The next family of tlie great fifth class are the umbrella
carriers, or umbelliferous plants, so called from the
Latin word lwibella, an umbel, or little shade.
They are not, however, by any means the most shady
of the vegetable tribe, for few are of any great height
or size, and their leaves are so deeply cut and carved,
so slender and so branching, that even a parasol-ant
would hardly be sheltered under one. They have
nothing of the umbrella but the spokes.
First, there rises from the ground one tall straight
stem, often hollow, and sometimes either ribbed,
curiously spotted, or covered with hairs. The leaves,
spreading and elaborately pinnate, grow for the most
part close to the root, and a few more grow at the joints
of the stem.
Each stem is terminated by an umbel, that is to say,
five, six, seven, or eight little slender branches, all
growing out from it, as their common centre, and all of
equal length, like the ribs of a fan. From each of these
there springs a second set of lesser spokes, each of
which bears a small flower, with five petals, five sta¬
mens, and two pistils.
These flowers are usually white, yellow, or green,
and so much alike are the plants of the tribe, in general
appearance, that it is not easy to distinguish one from
the other. Almost all have an oval fruit, which splits
into two halves when ripe, and becomes brown. The
152
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
prettiest seed among them is that of the shepherd’s
needle, a low plant, which you may easily find among
the corn, with some of its umbels still bearing white
flowers, whilst others stretch out the long sharp-
pointed beaks of their seeds, from which they have
taken the name of Shepherd’s Needle, or Venus’s
Comb.
Umbelliferous plants usually are found in temperate
climates, and, strangely enough, they are in most cases
unwholesome in their native state, though, when culti¬
vated, they become very valuable vegetables. Carrot,
fennel, parsley, and celery, all have wild brothers, which
it would be very dangerous to eat, and even our garden
celery is only made wholesome by being kept in the
dark, half-buried in the earth, which, though it makes
it very pale and yellow for want of the light of the sun,
deprives it at the same time of its poisonous qualities.
Carrots have by diligent cultivation been brought to
be those large bright orange-coloured roots which look
so tempting when sliced into broth. Their leaves, too,
are remarkably pretty, and in the days of the shops, of
which I told you before, the carrot-bed was our best
warehouse for silk dresses, as the variety of colours,
purple, crimson, scarlet, yellow, and green, all blended
together, was such as no other plant furnished.
Caraway seeds, which we find in seed-cakes, belong
to an umbelliferous plant ; and that best of sweetmeats,
angelica, is made from the stem of another, which grows
in Avet places.
Earth-nuts, Avhich all country children are perpetually
seeking in vain, lured on by the legend of some older
cousin, who once dug up a beauty, are the tubers be¬
longing to a very pretty umbelliferous plant, with star-
like blossoms, and delicate leaves, and a fibrous root,
UMBRELLA FLOWERS.
153
with a tuber that unskilled hands generally leave
behind.
Hogweed has rough hairy pinnate leaves that chil¬
dren often bring home from the hedges to delight the
pig with, and late in the year it bears large umbels, so
thick and close that they make quite hollow cups.
Cow-parsley is a delicate pretty plant, and its purple
stem in early spring, fluted like a pencil-case, and
covered with small white hairs, is one of the most beau¬
tiful of unregarded common things.
The largest of the tribe that is common among us, is
the tall poisonous hemlock, whose ribbed and spotted
stem is so well known to village boys, as being capable
of being made into a sort of musical instrument, for the
perpetrating of horrible noises, causing great exertion
to themselves, and making their sisters stop their ears
and run away. An immense kind, called the chandelier
hemlock, has lately been brought to our gardens from
America. It is like the common sort seen through a
magnifier ; it is to common hemlocks, what the Missis¬
sippi is to other rivers.
The gout-weed has handsome dark green smooth
leaves, and a creeping root, very hard to turn out when
once it has made its w^ay into a garden. It used to
prevail to a great extent in my own little nook of a
garden, and no wonder, as you will say, when you hear
the way I managed it, which was so silly that I can
hardly believe any child could have thought of it.
“ Mamma, I am going to give up half my garden to
that weed, and see if it will not be contented with
that.”
Well, I was a bad gardener ; but it wall be well for
us if we do not treat the gardens within in the same
fashion, by letting some one fault go on unchecked, for
154
TP1R HERB OF THE FIELD.
it will as surely eat up and ruin our hearts as the gout-
weed did my poor little piece of ground.
The sanicle, a curious plant growing in woods, has
umbel-forming little balls of brownish white flowers,
and is the last of the tribe that seems to be worth
noticing.
Perhaps you may be inclined to think that there are
some umbellate flowers besides wliat I have described,
growing on trees and shrubs, such as the elder and the
laurustinus ; but here you would not be right, as the
cyme, or flat cluster, in which their blossoms grow, is
irregularly branched, not in distinct circles of spokes
like an umbel. Besides, they have three stigmas in¬
stead of only two, and their fruit is a single hard seed,
enclosed in a berry.
Elder blossoms are delicious in smell, as you pass
along some shady lane, where they raise those fine
broad flat cymes, valued by the makers of elder-flower
water, and afterwards bearing dark rich purple berries,
so useful for making elder- wine ; while little boys have
scarcely less liking for the tree, the branches of which
may furnish them with pop-guns, when they have
pushed out the soft pith. This pith is so large that we
have a good opportunity of seeing in it what plants are
made of. If you look at a thin slice of it, or at the
pith of a rush in a magnifier, you will see that they are
something like a honeycomb, divided into six-sided
compartments or cells. These cells, tiny as they are,
are larger in the elder pith than in almost any other
plant, for they are found in every vegetable that grows,
in stalk, leaf, and blossom ; the whole is a tissue of
these minute cells, formed of a thin skin, or membrane,
colourless itself, but holding in each cell a drop or
grain, green, red, blue, or whatever may be the colour
UMBRELLA FLOWERS.
155
we see in flower or leaf. How beautifully arranged
these little cases must be, to give the delicate shading in
one flower, and the sharply-defined tints in another — a
blush rose, and a tulip for instance ! It is the white
shining membrane through which we see the colour,
that makes flowers have their satiny polished look, and
indeed that polished surface is of great use in turning
off wet, being such that dirt cannot stick to it. In¬
side the petals the colour is generally liquid ; in the
leaves there is a little grain in each cell, lying in the
midst of a green liquid, which dries up as autumn
comes, while the grain turns yellow, red, or brown.
A good deal like the elder in appearance, are the
white blossoms of the wayfaring tree, so called because
it grows by road-sides, and cheers the eye of the dusty
traveller. It has large ribbed leaves covered with short
white cotton, and its berries when half ripe are most
beautiful, being a pale waxy yellow, shaded on one
side with deepening red. Of a blight clear scarlet are
the berries of the pretty wild Guelder rose, which
blossoms in a very peculiar manner. All the outermost
flowers in the cyme are large, and of a much brighter
white than those within ; but on examination, you will
find that they contain no stamens or pistil, and only
serve as an ornamental border to the smaller flowers
within, which are perfect in all their parts. The Guel¬
der rose, cultivated in shrubberies, and called by chil¬
dren the snow-ball tree, bears nothing but these im¬
perfect flowers, which, instead of being merely an
edging, occupy every branch of the cyme, and form
those beautiful white globes, so brightly white and so
soft. Most delightful playthings are those summer
snow-balls, coming with Whitsuntide, and joined in all
our pleasant remembrances of May and J une, and long
156
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
warm evenings, when they look so white and moon-like
in the midst of the dark foliage of some shady path.
The snow-ball tree is said to have been first brought
from Flanders, and to have taken the name of Guelder
rose from the Duchy of Gueldres.
Laurustinus, gay even in winter, with evergreen
leaves, pink buds, and white blossoms, is a native of
the south of Europe and north of Africa. The blossom
and manner of growth of the pretty white snowberry a
good deal resembles these, though it has but one style,
and its little pink flowers grow in pairs instead of cymes.
It came originally from Canada, but it likes our climate
so well, and has been planted in so many woods for
pheasants to eat, that it may soon be looked upon as
being naturalized among us.
Next follow a race not very pretty to look at, though
all of them are wholesome, and some really valuable.
These are the goosefoot family, with their tall spikes
of small green blossoms, all possessing five stamens and
two pistils, and large coarse spreading leaves. There
are many of them growing wild in England, the largest
of which was once much valued and eaten as an excellent
and nourishing article of food. You may find it growing
on most old dunghills and heaps of rubbish, and may
know it by the bright pink colour of the lower part of the
stem. Its old names were “ fat hen,” or “ Good King
Henry after which King Henry I cannot tell, though I
had rather call King Henry VI. “ good,” than any of the
other seven. One kind, however, is still favoured by
being grown in gardens, and that is the spinach, which
makes such a pretty dark green ground for poached eggs
to repose upon. Of the same family is the beet, the root
of the most beautiful colour that ever comes in our way,
so fine is the deep rich red of those concentric rings, in
UMBRELLA FLOWERS.
157
the midst of their clear pink juice ; and another of the
same tribe is the great mangel-wurzel, a German name,
which signifies “ root of scarcity.”
This very large class, V., is nearly finished, and I
dare say you are tired of hearing of it ; yet I must not
miss telling you of the thrift, which makes so neat a
border for cottage flower-beds, and is such a lover of
salt, that it grows equally well on the rocks by the sea¬
side, and all round the salt-mines of Cheshire, so that
if you wish to oblige it very much, and make it give
you plenty of its pale pink blossoms, you must now and
then afford it a little salt. It has five pistils, as well as
five stamens ; and so also has that pretty pale blue flower,
flax, of which you no doubt have read a great deal when
learning the history of linen ; so I shall say no more
about it, except that there is a tiny sort of flax, with
a little delicate white bell, like a lily, which grows in
the driest parts of heaths and moors.
Last of all comes that very strange plant, the sun¬
dew, a great lover of bogs, but very well worth pursuing
into them, though you must be an early riser indeed, if
you wish to see its white blossoms open, for they never
expand except just at sunrise, and shut up again im¬
mediately after it. Yet they and their six pistils are
not the strangest part of the plant. Look at its leaves,
round green things, widening out from a red stem, the
shape of a battledore, and covered with red hairs, and
on these red hairs, however hot the sun may be, there
is always what looks like a pearl of dew, retained there
since the morning. It is not, however, a real drop of
dew, it is viscid or sticky, as you will find on touching
it, and it exudes from the plant. Sometimes small
insects may be found glued to the leaves by this drop
of dew, and some persons think that the plant lives
158
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
on their juices, and that the leaves act as a sort of trap
to catch them for it. I do not much like the idea of
this pretty flower being so like a beast of prey, in its
own small way, and I had rather believe that the
little flies entangled themselves by chance, and then
could not escape.
CHAPTER XX.
CLASS VI. — LILIES OF TIIE FIELD.
It is pleasant to have to come at last to considering the
Lilies of the Field, how they grow in their beauty, and
the glory of their raiment.
Most fair, and pure, and regal of all, stands the
great white lily,
“ The Lily flower,
With blessed Mary seen,”
which in pictures of the Annunciation is always drawn
in the hand of the angel. There is nothing more
purely white than the petals of this lily, not fragile and
fading at a touch, like that other delicate thing, the con¬
volvulus, but firm and steadfast, retaining their white¬
ness unsullied to the last. How exquisitely do the
grand, queen-like flowers stand out from the tall stem,
feathered upwards with narrow leaflets, and crowned
with half-opened flowers, and tapering buds. Very
handsome, too, are the six long stamens, bearing their
caskets of gold dust, as if waiting on the graceful bend¬
ing pistil in the midst, all shut within those superb
white petals. It is truly the queen of our gardens, and
when we know that its native home is the Holy Land,
we may please ourselves with thinking that it may have
LILIES OF THE FIELD.
159
been the very flower of which our blessed Lord spoke,
when lie said that Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these. No raiment, indeed, that
ever was spun or woven, can be as one of these, no¬
thing can ever be so lovely save the robes, unseen by us,
in which each heir of our royal birth is arrayed when
carried from the Font. Those are the only robes for
which we need take thought, and oh 1 how much
thought !
White lilies are freely given to us with all their store
of precious thoughts. They spread fast, they care little
for cold or heat, they flourish in cottage gardens or
smoky towns, and they live so long in water, that a sick
room may often be cheered by their loveliness. I told
you there was a confusion between the lily and fleur-
de-lis, and so, though it is the iris that is found in the
French coat-of-arms, the white lily is the especial
flower of the royal line of France. It was scattered on
their path when they returned after the great Revolu¬
tion, and the name of the white lily still thrills the
hearts of those who cling to the old faith and loyalty.
Some people think white lilies useful as well as beau¬
tiful ; indeed, I dare say many of us can remember
getting some hard knock or bruise, and how the useful
person of the family, who is always nurse, doctor, and
healer of cuts, came out with her bottle of white lily
leaves preserved in brandy, and though they did make
the hurt smart, she comforted us so kindly that we
could not help being cheered up.
I believe the Tiger Lily, with its orange petals, and
their black spots, also comes from the Levant. The
Turk’s cap is so called, because its petals turn back¬
wards into a round form, and, together with the
stamens, look very like the pictures of Eastern princes,
160
THE IIEItB OF THE FIELD.
be-tnrbaned and be-plumed, just what would suit Blue
Beard. Its home is in Germany; and that of the
brilliant scarlet Martagon, is Hungary. There are
many other species of lily, all very handsome, for the
most part large, and all without any calyx. They have
bulbous roots, and, indeed, I have told you all the
general features of the whole tribe when speaking of
the snow-drop and daffodil, so I will only mention a
few of the most noted and beautiful kinds.
The Tulip takes care not to be forgotten. Dressed
in its gaily-painted robes, it holds nearly the same place
among flowers, as the peacock among birds, and always
stands as an emblem of conceit. You know its black
stamens and its great triangular pistil. It is altered
by cultivation from a small species which grows wild
in some few parts of England, and is the especial
darling of the Dutch, who sometimes give enormous
prices for a single root. There is a story of a sailor
who, while waiting in a merchant’s office, took up what
he thought was an onion, sliced it up with his knife,
and ate it. Just as he had finished, there was a great
search for something, and much dismay when it was
missing ; for behold, the onion he had eaten, was a
precious tulip, the price of which would have bought
his ship and its lading twice over ! Some little chil¬
dren who meddle with what they don’t understand, and
what does not belong to them, may do just as much
mischief.
Very like the tulip is the delicate bending, drooping,
fritillary, chequered with purple squares like a chess¬
board, or a snake’s head ; indeed, it is sometimes
called the snake flower. It is not very common in
England, and the only place where I know it grows
wild, is at Oxford.
THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.
161
A far grander flower is the great fritillary, called
the crown imperial ; its circlet of bells, each possessing
six drops of clear nectar, depending gracefully beneath
the crown of narrow leaves, making it a magnificent
plant ; and it well may be called an imperial one,
since its native land is the old empire of Persia ; then
it came to Constantinople ; and then to Vienna, where
it grew in the Emperor’s garden ; and thence was sent
to England — certainly before Queen Elizabeth’s time.
As soon as the blossoms fade, the stems stiffen and
hold up their heads, so as to keep the seed from falling
out.
Guernsey lilies are very grand, beautiful flowers.
They are so called, because a ship bringing some roots
from Japan was wrecked on the coast of Guernsey,
and the bulbs buried in the sand, as it happened, the
very best soil for them, and there the beautiful things
grew up and blossomed, surprising all the beholders.
The Belladonna lily sends up its leaves in spring,
and its stout brown stem bearing a garland of deli¬
cately-shaded pink -and- white flowers very late in au¬
tumn. The whole cluster of flowers come out of a
sheath, or spatlie, as botanists call it ; the buds are
beautifully shaped, and its elegance, and fair pink-and-
wliite complexion, have caused its Italian name, which
means “ fair lady.” It is a native of the Cape, but
it is quite hardy, and ought to be more often found in
English gardens than it is ; pleasant as it is to see fair
fresh tapering petals looking spring-like in the midst
of the frost and fog of November, as, unlike most
plants, it keeps to the seasons of its native clime in
the southern hemisphere. One hint I would give to
console those who have had a root given them, and
fancy it is dead, because they see nothing of it : our
11
162
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
fair lady dislikes moving so much, that she seldom
shows her face for several years, till she has recovered,
and has had plenty of time to settle herself in her new
home.
I like few names of flowers better than that of the
Star of Bethlehem, a brilliant white star in truth,
glancing among its long green leaves, and well fitted
to put us in mind of the Star of the East. It is an
Eastern star, for it comes from Palestine, and though
sometimes found wild in England, it is probably a run¬
away from the old convent gardens, whither, perhaps,
it was brought, with its name, by some pilgrim from
the Holy Land.
I am not fond of keeping so much to garden flowers
as we have done this time ; but the fact is, that these
flowers, with their parts in sixes, are all so handsome
that they are sure to get into gardens. The blue-bell
(I mean the wild hyacinth, the English blue-bell, not
the hare-bell, or blue-bell of Scotland) is wild enough
indeed, spreading in perfect clouds over the copses,
and supplying the main strength of the May-day gar¬
lands, drooping its profuse deep blue-bells in such
multitudes, each footstalk bearing a little bract* as blue
as the flower. How pretty are the buds pressed close
together in that cluster, and how graceful the long
linear leaves ! I dare say most children, happy enough
to be brought up in the country, would say, as I do,
that some of their most joyous days have been spent
in blue-bell gathering. I shall never forget one walk,
nor I am sure will the little cousin who shared it with
me, when we went through a beautiful wood, tall trees
above, and a path winding along close to the sea,
which sparkled and glanced through their leaves ; and
* Bracts are leaves growing at the foot of the flower-stalk.
THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.
163
on the other side, a mossy bank rising, covered with
such a profusion of blue-bells ! How we tilled our
hands with them, and having agreed that we would be
very good, each made a point of giving the other her
very finest, most thickly-clustered bells, or the precious
white ones, and still more valued pale lilac bells, which
we used to call pink, and think such a prize ! And
then, when our nurses got into a hurry, and told us
to gather no more, I can still remember the feeling of
resolution with which we passed the choicest blue-bells,
not attempting to gather them, though, of course, just
because we had not got them, they seemed the best of
all. Only think, if that walk is so pleasant to me to
remember after twenty years, and because I was
honestly trying to be a good little girl, as well as for
the sake of my companion, does it not show us the
lasting value of really loving, and trying to do right ?
The thought of those untouched flowers is precious
still, and will always be so ; but would it be so if we
had disobeyed and turned aside after them ? Depend
upon it, it will be just the same in greater matters,
for a day will come when what we most prize now
will be as worthless to us as are in themselves the
blue-bells of twenty years ago. The love and the self-
restraint will be the lasting things.
Even blue-bells cannot keep entirely among wild
flowers, for the blue-bell is a hyacinth, and its eastern
brother, the hyacinth of Bagdad, is one of the most
petted of plants. In its natural state, the blossom is
not so long and slender as the blue-bell, nor are the
ends of the petals so prettily curled back. We gene¬
rally see it double, and of many varieties, to which
strange names are given. The hyacinth carries so
much nourishment in its bulb as to require no earth,
164
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
and many town children know the pleasure of keeping
a bulb in a glass all the winter, watching it shoot out
its long white fibres into the water beneath, and set up
its almond-shaped bud, which grows and spreads till
leaves, and stem, and blossoms, blue, white, or pink,
unfold themselves. Grecian legends say that this
flower sprung from the blood of Hyacinthus, a beau¬
tiful youth, who was killed by accident by their god
Apollo, and its leaves are marked with I. A., the first
letters of his name in Greek ; but no one ever has
been able to find any such marks on them, nor on the
wild blue-bell, which is therefore called in Latin, hya¬
cinthus non scriptus, the unwritten hyacinth.
The beautiful lily of the valley, shading its pearly
bells under its broad green leaf, is wild in some fortu¬
nate woods, and there each petal is marked with a
single deep purple spot, but strangely enough, these
disappear as soon as the root is transplanted into a
garden. How well they grow and thrive in some old-
fashioned gardens, spreading out in a whole wilderness
of green, and raising their lovely modest heads.
Solomon’s seal is of the same genus, and a very
pretty plant it is, its bending stem furnished with broad
green leaves, growing alternately, and at the spring of
each leaf, a pale green bell drooping gracefully down.
Both it and the lily of the valley have their seed in a
purple berry.
Garlick and onions belong to this class, as you may
see by looking at the six-pointed blossoms in the round
head of the onion. So does the great tropical plant,
the aloe, and the pine-apple, which grows in so curious
a manner, its purple blossoms being perched on each
division of what we call the fruit, which seems to be in
fact a stem crowned with the solid dark prickly leaves.
THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.
1G5
It grows in quantities in hot countries, though only in
hot-houses here. Indeed, it has hardly been known
in this country for more than a hundred years, and is
still considered as one of the rarest of fruits. It is
lucky for us homely people that we can do very well
without it, for we have been given much that is plea¬
sant to our taste, and wholesome for us, to grow freely
without over-care or cost under our own temperate sky.
Another fruit produced by a six-stamened flower is
the barberry. Perhaps you know its very sour oblong
red berries, its sharp spikes of thorn, its shining prick-
edged leaves, and its blossoms like clusters of little
yellow roses ; but probably you do not know how
curious is the arrangement of its stamens. They are
bent back towards the edge of the petals, which guard
the anthers from rain, but they are thus so far from the
germ that the pollen could never reach it. Touch the
lower part of the filament with a pin. It is as if you
had touched a spring; up jumps the filament, it bends
over the germ, opens its anther, lets out its pollen, then
goes quietly back to its proper position. Instead of a
pin, this is effected in general by the little foot, or
slender trunk of a bee seeking honey, and thus by a
wonderful arrangement of Providence the insect repays
the flower for the honey by setting the machine to work
by which the seed is produced.
Asparagus is another six-stamened plant which is
good for food, though it is not the red and yellow ber¬
ries that we eat, as they hang on the feathery little
trees that form such pretty groves along the beds in
autumn. It is the young buds of the plant itself that
form the thumbs (as the French call them,) of aspara¬
gus, that are so good to eat in the spring. It grows
166
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
wild in one small island on the coast of Cornwall,
called after it Asparagus Island.
Do you know that stiff yellow thing, the Asphodel,
its hard orange stem, its grass-like bluish leaves, its
star of six petals, and six downy stamens, tipped with
a red anther? We hear a great deal in poetry about
dwelling in meads of yellow asphodel, but they are not
at all the places I could fancy dwelling in, though I
like very much to botanize in them, for they are gene¬
rally peaty bogs, full of black moist earth. I think
they must have been admired by the Greeks as being
connected with the mountain air and fresh breezes,
delightful in so hot a country ; and that they have tra¬
velled from Greek into English poetry, without much
reason.
In still wetter places than these meads, generally in
a pond or ditch, we find the graceful water-plantain, its
pale lilac or white flowers possessing only three petals,
and putting us in mind of the three-petalled blue spider-
wort of our gardens in their form, though the growth
of the plant is very different. The spider-wort has all
its flowers packed up in a sheath, and has linear leaves,
while those of the plaintain have long stems, and are
slightly rounded, and its blossoms spread out on branches
on each side its tall upright stem.
Now that we have got into the bogs, wre must not
come away without a few rushes. Don’t you like
rushes? Shining, green, tapering rushes, so polished
outside, and containing that soft white pith. They are
choice playfellows for a country child. What famous
helmets, or fools’-caps, (whichever you call them,) do
they make, twisted round a band below7, and gathered
into a peak ! Or they will make still better slight bas¬
kets than the knock-head, and if you have the patience
THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.
1G7
to plait tliem and sew them up, they will make real
good baskets that are worth having, and last for some
time. Their pith serves for the wicks of rush candles,
and themselves for chair bottoms, so they are by no
means to be despised by grown-up people any more
than children. They have no leaves, only stems, and
their blossom is that brown tuft which we pull off be¬
fore using them. Those tufts contain a multitude of
little six-pointed starry flowers. You may see their
form more distinctly in the pretty little wood-rush,
which is more perfect in its parts, having leaves en¬
casing the stem like a grass, and a small starry flower,
containing six stamens and a three- cleft pistil.
One of these rushes is the Papyrus, the reed of
Egypt, on the rind of which, in former times, people
used to write with an iron pen, digging in the letters.
It was from this that paper was named. I have a
piece of this paper rush, which was raised in a hot¬
house. It is very large, a regular triangle in shape,
the blossoms on branches, all growing out together at
the top. The green skin is tough and leathery, not at
all like paper, you would say, and it is filled with a
quantity of white pith.
Lastly, before leaving the water, we must take the
table-cloth of the butterfly and grasshopper. Do you
remember
“ A mushroom their table, and on it was laid,
A water-dock leaf, which the table-cloth made?”
The water- dock is very handsome, its dark green leaves,
red stems, and strange blossoms, make a grand appear¬
ance, and here it does little harm, though its relations
are some of the most troublesome of weeds, their roots
creep so obstinately, and are so hard to kill. Even
when dug up and left outside the earth, they will still
168
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
shoot out again, and perhaps it is from this steadiness
in growing, in spite of adverse circumstances, that one
kind has acquired the name of patience dock.
The small sort, called the sorrel-dock, or cuckoo’s
bread-and-cheese, is esteemed by many children for its
pleasant sharp taste, and by many a dock leaf is used
as a cure for the sting of a nettle.
The dock has three calyx leaves, three red petals, six
stamens in a little bunch, three pistils, each possessing
a most beautiful little white-tufted stigma, and alto¬
gether producing one seed.
So ends our class of sixes, not very distantly related
to the spears and dags of class the third, only doubling
most of the parts, which in that class are in threes.
They are apt to have the same linear leaves, and bul¬
bous roots, and the same gay colours ; and when we
remember the beautiful form of the hexagon, or six-
sided figure, the most perfectly regular of all shapes, it
seems to show why so many of our most beautiful
flowers belong to this class.
Do you remember my showing you in the nut and
bean how plants grow up with two cotyledons, or seed
leaves, at first ? All plants do so grow up, except those
of the rule of three, the bulbs, the grasses, the rushes,
the orchises, and the palm-trees — every one of these
come up at first in a single bud, or, as botanists say,
one cotyledon. They all have their parts in threes and
sixes ; their leaves, as we have seen, are linear, and
without the network of ribs and veins of other leaves,
and their stems are always straight instead of branched,
and often hollow and jointed. These are curious dif¬
ferences for you to observe and remember.
169
CHAPTER XXI.
CLASSES VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.
After the first six classes we begin to get over the
ground a little faster, for the seventh class is very
small, there is only one English plant belonging to it,
and only one other that is often cultivated here. The
one English plant is the little winter-green, a white
flower that only grows in the northern counties. The
other is not small, for it is that noble tree, the horse-
chestnut. I cannot tell where the native country of the
horse-chestnut may be ; some say it is among the moun¬
tains to the north of India, and I should guess that it
must be a rather cold place, because the buds are so
well protected from the winter’s frost.
We see them even before Christmas, pointing up
their hard, sticky, dark-brown noses, in readiness for
the next spring, and if you wish to see a pretty sight,
I will tell you what to do. Take one of these buds,
and with a sharp knife and steady hand make what,
in learned language, is called a longitudinal section of
it, that is to say, cut it in two lengthways, just as the
meridians of longitude are marked on the globe. First,
you see there is an outer case of hard brown scales,
covered with gum, to keep all safe and firm ; there are
at least as many as seventeen to one bud, lapping one
over the other, so that Jack Frost may pinch as hard
and tight as he chooses without doing the least damage
to the precious little gem* within. A lady packs up
her gems and jewels in her morocco cases, lined with
* Gemma, a gem, is the Latin name for a leaf-bud.
170
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
satin, and made soft with cotton-wool ; but Nature
guards her jewels still more choicely, for smoother
than satin is the green lining of the innermost of these
gummy scales, and finer than cotton-wool is the soft
silky down within them, where nestles the young spike
of blossoms and leaves. You can already see the form
of the tapering spike, and the green of the mites of
leaves, and if you have a little microscope, and are
always hunting for objects for it, you will be delighted
to see for yourself how perfect the whole branch of
leaves and blossoms is already in this embryo state.
Is it not beautiful 1 And the more we look into them,
the more we see the perfection of these works of a
Divine Hand. A German botanist, with a much better
glass than we are likely ever to have the use of, man¬
aged to count the flowers, sixty-eight in number, and
to see the pollen on the stamens.
In the spring the sun dries up the gum, the scales
crack off, and are strewn under the tree, as we pull
brown paper off a parcel ; and as if a fairy wand had
touched them, out burst the light-green leaves, like
drooping fans, seven springing from one footstalk, and
four or five footstalks from each bud, all centring
round the straight spike of blossoms, which alone
points upright, while the leaves hang drooping round
it. Then how fast they grow, as if they all were
racing which should come to their full size first, the
spikes shooting higher and higher. The leaflets, which
to-day were as long as a baby’s finger, are to-morrow
quite as long as your own ; the next day a man could
hardly span them, and in a week, it must be a giant
indeed who could lay the leaf on the palm of his hand.
Next, the May sunshine opens the blossom buds on
that tall upright branch, where they grow together in
CLASSES VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.
171
little bunches of three, twenty-two of these threes,
perhaps, on one spike, each with a calyx divided into
five, a corolla of five petals, with seven stamens, and
one pistil, its germ round, and its style tapering. The
petals are white, but the two upper ones have a large
spot of colour on them, sometimes yellow and some¬
times pink, and this gives the flowers a peculiarly
pretty variegated appearance. Beautiful things ! 1 am
always sorry when the white petals fall off, and the
tree of noble spikes loses its beauty, and ceases to be
what it lias been very well named — a giant’s nosegay.
It would be too much for the poor tree to maintain
and bring to perfection a fruit for every one of the
sixty-six flowers on each spike ; so only two or three
on each even form their fruit, and of these one or two
generally fall off, and lie like little green prickly balls
on the ground ; the others swell into a large prickly
green case, with a beautiful smooth lining, like white
kid leather, fashioned into two cells, holding the delight
of all children, two polished brown seeds, as large as
a marble, and veined and smooth as the mahogany
dining-table. What a prize they are, and what fun to
pick them up and play with them ; and how they are
admired, especially when only half ripe, with their
brown and white in spots like a pie-bald horse ! If you
put them in the fire, beware, for the heat turns their
moisture to steam, and in trying to break out of their
hard case, the steam drives them out with a bounce,
breaks the case, and makes it fly all over the room.
Don’t eat them either, for they would make you very
sick ; leave them to deer, which are very fond of them.
There is another kind of horse-chestnut, with red blos¬
soms and smooth fruit, not nearly as handsome as the
common kind. Now we have come to another tree,
172
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
we will not leave it without my telling you something
about bark. Did you ever peel a stick? First there is
a thin brown skin, next a thicker coat, green outside,
which is apt to hurt one’s fingers. These are the two
coats in their youth, and they are always growing and
thickening each year, not from the outside, but by
layers from within. The inner rind is called the liber,
and on this the Romans used to write, and so in Latin
a book was named liber, and you know in English a
number of books is termed a library. Who would
have thought of a library being so called from the bark
of a tree ! The bark, I said, grows from within, re¬
ceiving layers from the useful sap-wood, and so the
outer coat of the tree is always growing too tight for it.
Some trees, such as the horse-chestnut, seem to manage
nevertheless to keep their garments whole, but the
birch peels off its old skin in long thin purplish ribbons,
that are tempting to pull at ; the plane makes a ragged
figure of itself, by casting off its jacket in great flakes ;
and the oak and elm show deep furrows in their outer
bark, where it has split and parted wider each year, to
make room for the under growth of the liber, and the
enlarging rings of the sap-wood.
I told you about most of the eighth class, with parts
in fours and twice fours, when we were about the last
bells of summer ; there are only a few more worth
mentioning, such as the bright yellow-wort, with its
stiff stem and handsome flowers, and the whole tribe of
whortleberries and cranberries. These have stiff white
blossoms and low shrubby stems ; they grow on a peaty
soil, chiefly on mountains or bogs ; and their berries,
either red or purple, have a pleasant sharpness, which
makes them veiy good for tarts or for jam. I have
heard a lady say who spent her younger days in a town
CLASSES VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.
173
on the borders of the New Forest, that all the tarts to
be bought there in shops, were made of whortleber¬
ries, and very sour they were. Now, the cranberries
most used in tarts, are imported from America ; but
many mountain children in our own country still gather
them for market, and the children who have learnt that
pretty book, “ Moral Songs,” will not have forgotten the
little sick boy’s gift of purple berries to the kind lady.
The beautiful American plants, azaleas and kalmias,
belong to this class. I think the bud of the great white
kalmia, or calico flower, as it is called in America, one
of the prettiest things I know; and the flower pinned
down with its eight regular stamens, is very elegant.
The stamens have the same curious property of spring¬
ing up and shedding their pollen as the barberry. These
are not apt to be seen out of grand gardens, and the
only one of the race that is apt to come in small people’s
way is the rhododendron, a very splendid mountain
dweller, who has made himself, his evergreen leaves,
and bunches of crimson or lilac blossoms, nearly at
home in our climate. One small sort grows in Swit¬
zerland, and the Asiatic ranges of mountains are the
proper abode of the handsome ones, where they keep
high enough to be out of the great heat, but too low
for perpetual snow ; and when planted here, in peat or
bog, or anything like mountain soil, they grow like
natives, flourish, and attain a great size. All these
three, however, kalmia, azalea, and rhododendron, have
honey which is good for bees but not good for man, and
there are stories, both ancient and modern, of very
serious illnesses being caused by eating honey made
entirely from these flowers.
The maple has eight stamens, growing in a small
green blossom. The fruit is very curious, two long
174
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
lobes, commonly called keys, hanging down from a
long stem, and each containing one seed. The maple
changes the colour of its leaves early in autumn, and
looks very gay in the hedges ; its leaves, too, are of a
very pretty lobed form, especially those of that large,
handsome kind, the sycamore. The sap, too, of one
kind is very sweet, so sweet that in North America it is
made into sugar ; I have seen a cake of brown, coarse-
looking maple sugar, such as each Canadian farmer
makes for his own use, just as we make cheeses.
Peru is apt to grow sun-coloured flowers, and thence
comes what we foolishly call the nasturtion, though it
has two very good old English names, Indian cress, and
yellow lark’s heels, besides a real Latin one, tropaeo-
lum, or trophy, given because the leaves are like shields,
and the flowers like golden helmets. It is a droll flower,
with its yellow calyx growing out into a long spur
behind, and the little fringes to its yellow or orange
petals. These petals are very good when put into a
salad, which is the reason, I suppose, of their being call¬
ed Indian cress ; and it is said that just before sunrise,
especially in thundery weather, they give out flashes of
light, as a black cat’s back does in a frosty night. All
I can tell you about the cause of this wonder is, that it
is the effect of electricity, and there we stop short, nei¬
ther of us much the wiser. The prettiest sort of tro-
preoliun is the little canary-bird flower, so called because
it is just like a little yellow bird, the bud like a canary
with its wings closed, the half-expanded flower like one
flying, and the full-blown like a bold cock canary, wings
and tail full spread, darting out at an enemy.
Next comes the purple mezereon, blossoming in the
winter without its leaves ; and all the weedy race of
persicarias, those red-stemmed things with white bios-
CLASSES VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.
175
soms and heart-shaped leaves, that twist and twine
wherever they are not wanted, and infest damp soil
especially. The buck-wheat is the only one that is of
any use, and that grows in such poor soils that nothing
else would flourish there.
Herb Paris, an odd-looking thing with four styles,
twice four stamens, four petals, and four leaves spread¬
ing on each side of the stem ; and the little adoxa,
sometimes called musk, a tiny green plant of early
spring, growing in hedgerows, with its little flowers in
round heads, bring up the rear of class eight.
Class the ninth lias one English plant, the beautiful
pink flowering- rush, which grows in rivers, but not
very frequently. I have only once seen it, and then it
was in a river in Gloucestershire. It was almost out
of blossom, but it was a prize indeed. The bay-tree
belongs to the ninth class ; I daresay you know it well,
those fragrant evergreen leaves are so pleasant to gather
and make a nice mark for the collect and psalms in a
prayer-book. It grows wild in the south of Europe,
and was greatly prized by the Greeks and Romans ;
indeed, it was of bay leaves that they wove the wreaths
with which they crowned their victors, either in war,
poetry, or their games of strength and skill. These
are the corruptible crowns for which the Greeks strove
and trained themselves, with so much more self-denial
and steadiness than the children of light are always
ready to take for the crowns of glory that will never
fade away. The Latin name of the bay is laurus, and
this has made a little confusion, as the laurel is quite a
different plant ; but whenever you hear of people being
crowned with laurel, like Julius Caesar, it is sure to
mean with bay.
The cinnamon tree is a sort of bay, which grows
176
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
plentifully in Ceylon, and its light shining evergreen
leaves are most beautiful in the woods. It is the
inner bark that we use to flavour puddings, and the
seed, when boiled, yields an oil that hardens into white
cakes, and is made into candles. The camphor tree,
another of the same family, is found in China and
Borneo, and the white lumps of fragrant refreshing
camphor are found entire in the stem of the tree, while
some is also obtained from its leaves by distilling them.
Rhubarb is another of the ninth class ; I mean the
medicine that is so good a lesson to little children, in
resolution and self-command. The rhubarb that is
made into tarts is another of the same family. It is
the root that is powdered and used as medicine, and
is brought in lumps from Turkey. I wonder which
of the small people who may read this chapter can
take a dose of rhubarb without a fuss beforehand, and
with only one wry face afterwards. If they can — no,
I will not say can , but will — if they will, there is a
hope that they may turn out men or women fit for
something ; if not, unless they will strive to conquer
themselves, I am afraid they will shrink and repine at
present annoyance all their lives.
Now for class ten. To this belongs the pretty arbu¬
tus, or strawberry tree, which grows wild nowhere in
the British isles but on the islands of the beautiful
Lake of Killarney, and the hills round it. Next comes
the whole race of saxifrage, yellow and white, dwellers
on mountains and rocks, the white soap-wort, and the
more agreeable family of sweet pinks and carnations.
Sweet William stands first of these, fine fellow that
he is, either crimson velvet all over, or white with a pink
eye, and living at home in Germany, but very happy
in an English cottage garden, and making a grand
CLASSES VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.
177
show in the nosegays that you send to some sister or
cousin in London. The cloves, carnations, and pico-
tees, about which gardeners are so choice, all come
from one common sort, wild in the south of Europe.
I don’t like any so well as the old blood-red clove, and
the plain white pink, they both smell so sweet; and
yet, saying this seems rather hard on those pretty
white ones trimmed with deep purple, but the worst of
them is that their calyx, not being meant for a double
llower, is crammed so full of their petals, that it is apt
to split and look very untidy. The little annual Indian
pink is very pretty, its two long curling styles always
put me in mind of the trunk of some kind of insects.
We have a few wild kinds, but none very common. The
whole race have linear leaves, a cup-like undivided
calyx, live petals, fastened down with a long claw, and
spreading like a fan above, ten stamens, and two styles.
The little insignificant sandworts that creep on the
gravel, the pretty white stitcliwort or starwort, that
blows on hedge-banks in early spring, the chickweed
with which we feed birds in cages, and the whole
family of silene or catchfly, are all ten-stamened
flowers, with three long curled styles almost like the
horns of an insect, their five petals each cleft in the
middle very prettily. To the catchflies belongs what
some children call white-bottle, or bladder-campion,
from its large swelling calyx. I used to call it white
robin, and fancy it the white comrade of the red robin ;
but in this I was much mistaken, for red robin, or
rose-campion, has five pistils with its ten stamens, and
is a lychnis, as well as its odd wild-looking brother,
ragged robin, also called meadow lychnis or cuckoo¬
flower, because it shows its jagged pink petals and
reddish stem just as cuckoos begin to sing.
12
178
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Another with five styles is the beautiful corn-cockle,
which raises its deep purple-veined petals, and long
slender calyx leaves in its tall grey downy stalks, in
the midst of our fields. I am afraid farmers call it a
troublesome weed, and it is said that from its old name
of Lolly, the followers of Wickliffe were called Lollards.
In the Book of Job, the cockle coming up instead of
the barley, is spoken of as a great misfortune. The
yellow and white stonecrops also have five styles, starry
flowers, with lumps rather than leaves ; so has the
many-belled pennywort, so named from its round leaves,
and the lovely woodsorrel, delicate little thing, do you
not delight in finding its beds, full of those pale green
trefoil leaves, and exquisite white flowers streaked with
purple? In Germany it is called the Hallelujah, and
is thought the special flower of Trinity Sunday, be¬
cause of its threefold leaves.
A word or two of the eleventh class, which includes
all the numbers of stamens from ten to twenty ; but
among all these there are but few interesting flowers.
There is, to be sure, the tall purple loosestrife, pointing
up long spires by the river side; and there is the
agrimony, another plant blossoming in spikes, yellow
flowers, particularly fond of dusty places, and turning
to seeds shaped like little cones upside down, and
bristling with small hooks, that make them adhere
almost as closely as burs.
We ail care more for mignionette, the very name of
which means a little darling. It is very sweet, and its
pale subdued tints serve to set off gayer flowers, just as
a quiet-coloured dress looks well with a brighter rib¬
bon ; and it is much loved by Londoners, who grow it
in long green boxes outside their windows. Look at
some pretty verses about it in “ Moral Songs.” It has
MANY-STAMENED FLOWERS.
179
its seeds in very curiously-sliaped vessels, like little
urns. There are two sorts of wild mignionette ; one
is like the garden kind, only larger and scentless, called
by the name of woad, the plant with which the ancient
Britons used to dye themselves. The other is yellower,
and in longer spikes, and is called the rocket yellow-
weed.
Lastly, comes the houseleek. It has eleven stamens
and eleven pistils, a white blossom, and great fleshy
leaves, which live so very long, that its Latin name
is Semper Vivum — always alive. It grows on the
thatched roofs of houses, and very handsome it is ; but
some people have an odd fancy that it is unlucky to let
it blow, and always cut off the poor thing’s flower-stalk
as soon as it begins to shoot up. It is a very silly
fancy, and I never found any account of the beginning
of it.
So end the first eleven classes, which are known by
counting the number of the stamens.
CHAPTER XXII.
CLASSES XII. XIII. — MANY-STAMENED FLOWERS.
After the first eleven, as I told you, the classes of
flowers cease to depend on the number of the stamens,
and are settled by their arrangement. The twelfth
class is Icosandria, which, perhaps, you may recollect,
as I told you about it when we talked about the apple
and the may thorn. All its many stamens are seated
on the calyx, and its petals are for the most part but
loosely fastened on.
We went through our most frequent and familiar
180
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
friends of this class before, so I will only mention a
few which we missed. First in order, though not
countrymen of our own, stand, or rather crawl, the
Cactus tribe, sometimes called melon-thistles. I have
only known them in green-houses, or windows, where
they unfold their rich scarlet or pink blossoms on their
ungainly, leafless, prickly stems, bristling with tufts
that seem as if they had been pulled out of a tooth¬
brush, and stinging the unwary finger. The finest we
see is the Cactus Grandiflorus, a very handsome red
flower, with an exquisite tinge of purple within, and a
long tongue of white stamens clustered close together ;
or there is the pink kind, and a second pink one, that,
creeps about in long ropes covered with bristles, and
very seldom does its owners the favour of blossoming.
At gardeners’ shops we now and then see odd-looking
round things, like little melons, stuck all over with
tufts of hoary spikes, like vegetable hedgehogs, and
now and then, by good luck, bearing one small pink
blossom in the centre of each tuft ; or, perhaps, some
kind friend has brought you home, from the Pantheon
bazaar, one of these droll little wonders, growing in
the smallest of red flower-pots, and looking more like
a thing in a doll’s house than a living plant ; but all
this gives us very little notion of what a cactus really
is — no, and we should not be much nearer the truth
even if we had seen them growing in the beautiful
rocky gardens of the Scilly Isles, where they hang
down with their rich red blossoms over almost perpen¬
dicular faces of rock.
As fiir as I can make out, a cactus, in its own
tropical regions of South America, is like a vegetable
boa-constrictor, covered with porcupine’s quills, hog’s
bristles, or wasp stings, in addition to the most mag-
MANY- STAMENED FLOWERS.
181
nificent crimson, scarlet, or yellow flowers. Some of
them are so large and thick that they produce solid
wood, and they hang from tree to tree in matted,
tangled ropes, twisted in and out so thickly as to he
perfectly impenetrable. The axe of man is soon
wearied out in struggling with them ; and the wild
animals themselves cannot force their way through,
but can only pass through lanes, as it were, in the
forest, which their own constant tread has worn down,
while even jaguars cannot descend through the tangled
mass below the branches of the trees. Two missionary
settlements, but half a mile apart, situated on different
small streams running into the same river, have not
the least communication with each other through the
jungle, and the only way of going from one to another
is by descending one stream, and ascending the other,
a distance of eight or nine miles.
In India, fences are made with cactus, and the un¬
wary who have tried to get through them, have come out
stuck completely over with spikes, pinning the clothes,
and even boots, fast down to the flesh. In fact, as a
fortification for a garden, the cactus must be acknow¬
ledged to be superior even to our own holly hedge.
Of the same race is the great night-blowing cereus, a
rich white flower that only opens by night, and with
its flame-coloured stamens, as it unfolds in its own
flowery land of Mexico, looks almost like a great lamp.
It would be hard to love a cactus for its own sake,
though many love it for putting them in mind of some
friendly window where the red blossoms have peered
over the white blind, and kind voices and cheerful
faces have dwelt ; but the staring flower and unshady
stem have few personal charms, and we willingly go
to a very different plant, the fair white-blossomed
182
THE I1ERB OF THE FIELD.
myrtle, so pure and fresh, with its tufted stamens and
delicious evergreen leaves. It is a home friend,
whether reared with pains and care in a little flower¬
pot on the window-seat, or, as in some favoured places
it may he seen, flourishing up to the very eaves of the
house. Broad-leaved or narrow-leaved, it is always
honoured and respected, and treated as something
choice — one of the simply dressed, but high-born ladies
of the flowers, her purity and modest grace, her attrac¬
tion, without gaiety of colour, as we said before of
her companion, the jessamine. It grows in perfect
thickets in Italy and Greece, though ancient winters
say that it was not originally a native, but was brought
from Asia. It was highly esteemed by the old Greeks
and Romans, and myrtle-wreaths were used as well as
bay to adorn the victors in their games. It was con¬
sidered to be the plant of peace and love, and when a
general gained any great advantage for his country
without bloodshed, the myrtle was wound with his
garland of bay. The goddess of beauty. Venus, was
said to have sprung from the sea-foam with a myrtle-
wreath round her brow ; so the Roman ladies used to
put the leaves into the water in their baths, as if they
thought beauty must come out of myrtle tea. The
fruit of the myrtle is a purple berry, which seldom or
never ripens in England, but was once used in cookery
by the Romans. There is, however, a large kind of
myrtle growing in Jamaica, which is called the
pimento, and which supplies us with allspice for our
puddings.
The Pomegranate tree is sometimes seen in England,
against walls, for the sake of its deep crimson blossoms.
We must look to the bright Mediterranean shores to
find its fruit ripened ; rich orange-shaped and coloured
MANY-STAMENED FLOWERS.
183
fruit, divided into five cells, containing numerous seeds
in purple pulp (from which it is called the Pome¬
granate, the seeded apple,) gathered into a sort of crown
at the top, formed by the old calyx. Its name puts
us in mind of many things : the bells and pome¬
granates of gold that bordered the robe of the high-
priest, and the workmanship of the gold of the inside
of the Temple, where it must have had some signi¬
fication which we cannot understand. The Spanish
Arabs named their loveliest city Granada, because they
thought the form of the soft rounded vale like the out¬
line of the fruit. The fruit became the ensign of the
city, which was the birth-place of our poor Queen
Katherine of Arragon, and in remembrance of that
fair home of her youth, the pomegranate became her
badge, and afterwards that of her daughter Mary.
W e now and then see the almond tree in gardens,
its delicate pink blossoms coming long before the
leaves, which, in one variety, have their under sides
covered with a white cottony substance that gives
them a grey, dull appearance. It is this hoariness
that is referred to in that last and most solemn chapter
of the Book of Ecclesiastes, where the Preacher says,
among other tokens that the time is coining, for
“ man’s going to his long home,” that “ the almond
tree shall flourish.” The almond tree grows wild in
the Holy Land, and its fruits were among the gifts
that Jacob desired his sons to carry to the Governor of
Egypt, whom they knew so little. The rod by which
the Lord was pleased to show that He had chosen
Aaron to be His priest, blossomed with almond flowers,
and was laid up in the Ark.
The almonds we use are chiefly brought from
Smyrna ; and they are much grown about Avignon, in
184
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
France, where the hoary leaves are said to give the
country a dull, desolate aspect. The outer case of the
nut is brown, and of a long form, to suit the white
crescents, that look so inviting on purple raisins, or
are the hearts of such very large sugar plums, that
people with moderate-sized mouths had rather have
nothing to do with them, and only very small people
have much desire to have such a mouthful.
That we may not be entirely un-English, we must
just mention our pretty mountain-ash, its white flowers,
feathery leaves, and brilliant red berries. It belongs
to the same family as apples and pears, and has, like
them, five pistils. The Scots call it rowan, and used to
believe it had many virtues, and that a sprig of it would
protect them from many strange evils.
The creamy meadow-sweet, otherwise prettily called
Queen of the Meadow, must be mentioned here. The
meadow-sweet has a very pretty, irregular corymb,
and is particularly pretty mixed with willow-herb, and
purple loose-strife. There is a garden kind of meadow¬
sweet, about which I have another pleasant school-
child story to tell you : —
We had once a girl, who had a very pleasant, quick,
obliging way, an honest face, and good temper, that
made us like her very much. We took a great deal
of pains with her, and I do believe she was very fond
of us ; but, after a time, she grew careless and idle, did
not do well in her first place, and we lost sight of her.
After a long time, her two little sisters came to school
one Sunday, each with a very large nosegay of flowers,
that evidently came from no garden of theirs, and
which they triumphantly gave to us. We asked about
them, and found that our old friend was now in service
at a gardener’s, had come home for a Sunday, and
MANY-STAMENED FLOWERS.
185
had got leave to bring these beautiful flowers, which
she sent to us. The part of the nosegay we chiefly
admired was this meadow-sweet, and a little while
after, to our great surprise, the little girls brought us
a present of a root, which their sister had begged from
her master. You will guess, after this, that she had
conquered her idleness, and was going on very well ;
and, I am glad to tell you, that I have heard nothing
but good of her since, nothing to spoil the pleasure
her meadow-sweet gives me every year when I see its
cream-coloured blossoms.
I believe I have already explained to you the dif¬
ference between the wholesome twelfth class Icosandria,
and the poisonous thirteenth, Polyandria. Both have
a greater number of stamens, but those of the twelfth
grow on the calyx — those of the thirteenth on the
germ.
We must not pass by the poppies, the only English
scarlet flowers except the pimpernel. They show us
the characteristics of the class very plainly, their calyx
falling off when the flower unfolds, the multitudinous
stamens with purple anthers, clustered round the foot
of the great urn of a pistil, the stigma so beautifully
ornamented with rays coming out from one centre,
and lifting itself up upon little supports like the lid of
the urn, when the seed is ripe. Poppies are as poison¬
ous as any of their tribe, and cause a heavy slumber,
for which reason they are considered as emblems of
sleep. Opium is a medicine prepared from a yellow-
white, or purple poppy that grows in the east. It is
very useful in lulling severe pain, and producing sleep
in bad illnesses ; but the Turks and Chinese are so
foolish as to take it without being ill, because they like
it to confuse their minds, and send them into a sort of
18(5
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
heavy trance or day-dream. I am afraid some people
even in England do the same, in hopes of forgetting
their troubles ; but this is a very bad plan, as it stupi-
fies their senses, and hurts their health. Besides, they
ought to know that God sends troubles that they may
do us good, not that we should try to forget them.
By the sea-side we may find horned poppies, which,
instead of an urn, have long pods shaped like horns,
and in the corn-fields, now and then, the bright little
red and purple pheasant eye, well named, for the
colouring is very like that of the beautiful eye of the
cock pheasant.
Who knows the glory of the river and pool, the
great white Water-Lily? It is our largest native
flower ; and magnificent to behold are the thick solid
white petals, and long firm anthers within them. By
day it rises above the water, spreads at noon, closes
with evening, and by night it draws its white cups to
be refreshed and sheltered beneath the surface of the
stream, where its large flat heart-shaped leaves are
always floating, sustained as they are by corkscrew
stems, that lengthen or contract according to the depth
of the water, so that the leaf may always be upon the
surface. The yellow water-lily is smaller and less
common than the white one, and not quite so beautiful.
There is a very grand kind of yellow or red water-
lily that growrs in Egypt and India, and blossoms at
the time of the inundations of their rivers. It is called
the Lotus, and was highly honoured by the old Egyp¬
tian idolaters, as it still is by the Hindoos. The
largest of lilies is the Victoria Regia, a great white
South American flower, growing in the river of the
Amazon, and the leaves so large and solid that a
child can walk on them. A few are grown in England
MANY- ST ALIENED FLOWERS.
187
in houses so warm you could hardly bear them, and
always in hot-water ponds.
The lime tree is another of this class, though it does
not seem to be very closely related. So are the pretty
yellow cistuses that twist about on thymy banks, look¬
ing so cheerful and smiling, their five petals as frail
as those of their handsome relative from Cyprus, the
Gum-Cistus, so beautifully painted, each white petal
shading into yellow, and dashed with deep red so regu¬
larly, as to form a pentagonal star when the flower
opens in early morning, before the fierce heat of the
sun has faded it. I once told you of that pretty lawn,
shut in with trees, giving such pleasant peeps of the
arm of the sea beyond, where we used to watch the
boats glide past, with their sails white or red. There
used to be a gum-cistus in the middle, and I shall
never forget one sunny morning before breakfast, when
I, a very little child, was standing there with my dear
godfather, and showing him how all yesterday’s cistuses
were lying snowed down, and faded on the grass ; and
he answered me that everything here faded and passed
away, like the flowers and the boats, and we should
pass away too. I thought it very strange and sad
then, and would fain have forgotten it ; but it always
came back with the remembrance of the boats, or the
sight of the cistus, and now I see that he did not mean
it sadly.
The great crimson two-pistilled peony, and the pink
and blue larkspurs, belong to the many-stamened race,
as well as the handsome bee-larkspur, so called be¬
cause it looks as if a black bee had settled on each
blossom. Larkspurs are wild in Greece, and that
other old-fashioned flower, the Monkshood, comes from
the Alps. The little dark grey cowl, is a very good
188
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
reason for its name. It grows so freely, that it lias
run wild in England ; but not so the columbine, which
I believe to be a native flower made into a garden one.
It is an especial favourite with me, for the beauty of
its form ; it has no calyx, but five purple, or pink¬
spreading petals, set on alternately with five nectaries,
each with a little spur curved downwards, all shutting
in from thirty to forty stamens, and five germs, the
flowers hanging down like bells from a tall stalk that
rises among spreading bluish pinnate leaves. The nec¬
taries are the special beauty of the flower, shaped ex¬
actly, to my mind, like an Indian slipper, with the toe
turned up in a point, and no heel. Others, however,
think them like five little doves drinking, with the
petals for wings ; and thus the flower received its
name of columbine, from the Latin name, Columba, a
dove. Others, again, made the five doves into eagles,
and calling it Acpiilegia, from Aquila, an eagle ; but
slippers, doves, or eagles, there are the pretty nec¬
taries, purple, pink, or white, and I hope you will
make acquaintance with them next summer, if you
don’t know them already. The only white one I ever
knew is in our garden, and I have a great liking for
it. Shall I tell you why ? Because a little school¬
girl dug it up in the woods, and brought it to me, after
I had admired its blossom in one of her “ Sunday
nosegays.”
The yellow meadow-rue is of this class, and so is
the clematis, a climbing plant, of which there is one
very handsome garden kind. There is no corolla, but
in this sort, the calyx is very large and purple. The
seeds are very numerous, and each has a long silky
tail. The stems twist and twine, and hang in masses,
and thus the Latin name clematis, means a vine-
CRUCIFORM FLOWERS.
189
shoot. The most common garden sort has a white
calyx, and is called Virgin’s bower ; it makes a very
pretty shelter for a garden-gate, or climbs over an
arbour, looking like a modest, cool screen. The
pleasantest of the family is our own Englishman, the
Traveller’s-joy ; is not that a nice name for this grace¬
ful climber? which especially delights in hedges, “by
the dusty way-side drear,” scrambling over them, and
putting out such profusion of its greenish white
blossoms, to freshen them up when the early summer-
flowers are over. On it holds, through all the autumn,
and when its seeds begin to ripen, out they hang their
long white silk feathers, till the whole plant is like a
white whig, or as we country folks call it, “ old man’s
beard.” It really is like the hedges putting on hoary
locks for the old age of the year. Old man’s beard
grows to a great age and size. I am almost afraid
to say what an immense cable of it, fairly turned into
wood, I have seen hanging from one old crooked thorn
to another.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CLASS XV. — CRUCIFORM FLOWERS.
From plants arranged by the number of their stamens,
we go to those whose class is settled according to their
length.
If you look back to the seventh chapter, among the
last bells of summer, you will find an account of class
xiv., by the name of Labiate Flowers. It always has
four stamens, one pair long, and one pair short, and the
corolla is always arranged so as to cover them in a
helmet shape, with its single petal.
190
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
The next, class xv., contains a great number of
flowers, all exactly of the same shape, and that shape
one that we regard with the same kind of honour as
the trefoil, namely, the cross. These cross-shaped, or
cruciform flowers, Avell deserve the mark set on them ;
for though in general they are not noted for their beauty,
they are some of our most valuable plants, and not one
of the whole tribe is unwholesome.
It will be best to begin with the largest of the race,
as the parts can be seen in them more distinctly. They
are of the few that are cultivated for the sake of their
blossoms, though they only become prized in gardens,
when their cross-shape has been destroyed by doubling
the petals, so that they will never produce seed. And
here a thought comes into my head, that if a Christian
seeks after the admiration of this world, he tries to win
it by hiding his cross, and making the most of such of
his gifts as are indeed showy, but were meant to shelter
and aid the good seed within, not to ruin and starve it.
These cross-shaped flowers are the wall-flower and
the stock. If you live in an old town, or near some
grey ruin, you will be sure to see the yellow crosses of
the wall-flower waving where perhaps St. George’s
red-cross pennon streamed in former times, or if you
have a garden at all, I think you cannot fail to have a
single wall-flower in it. You see it has four petals
spreading out in a very prettily shaped cross, much
like that which the knights of St. John used to wear
on their mantles. Pull out one of these petals, and
you find that it is suddenly narrowed into a colourless
strip, which fastens it to the bottom of the deep cup-
shaped calyx, consisting of four leaflets. Within are
six stamens, four long, and two short, so unlike those
of the sixth class, that -you could never take one of
CRUCIFORM FLOWERS.
m
these cruciform flowers for one of the lily race ; and in
the middle we find a pistil, a very long and narrow
germ, very short style, and a little two-cleft stigma.
These parts you will find in every one of the fifteenth
class, cruciform corolla, four long, and two short
stamens, and a single pistil. In about half of them
the germ becomes a silicle, not very unlike the pea-pod
in shape, but always different in two respects, that
whereas the seeds of the butterfly-flowers are fastened
to the same side of the case all the way down, those of the
cruciform plants are fixed by turns to each side, and the
reason of this is, that when the pod opens to shed its
seed, it splits only on one side, from top to bottom,
while the silicle separates at the bottom, the side of the
seed-vessel curls up with its own share of seeds, and
the stigma at the top alone holds them together.
When taken down from its wall, and grown in good
soil, the wall-flower becomes much larger, and spots of
deep red (the colour of the calyx) spread on its petals.
In time it is doubled, and entirely red, and becomes a
very handsome flower, under the name of bloody-war -
rior, the glory of old English gardens, and the great
ornament of May-garlands. There are yellow and
pink varieties, but none so noble-looking as the old-
fashioned bloody-warrior, his head nodding with the
weight of its numerous dark double blossoms.
No one can rival him but his cousin the stock, or
July flower, as it is sometimes called, a grand sight in
its full splendour of crimson, or white double blossoms.
There is a little wild English stock, but I believe the
parent of all these handsome varieties came from
Germany.
Of the cruciform plants in our gardens, there is one
race, however, far more important — nay, which give
192
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
their name to gardens in Scotland, and which, accord¬
ing to their date, may claim precedence over the po-
tatoe. They have yellow blossoms when they are al¬
lowed to flower at all, but this is not by any means
what is required of them. Of one or two kinds we do
indeed eat the young blossom buds, but for the most
part we chiefly value the leaves and the roots.
This race is that properly known as colewort, in
Scotland, kail. One kind, which bears large leaves,
veined with fleshy foot-stalks, was coaxed into doubling
leaf over leaf, in a large round solid leaf-bud, white
within, and this, on its very short thick stumpy stem,
in many a row in the garden, is called — need I tell you
what ? Another variety reddened its leaves to a beau¬
tiful deep crimson. Another learnt to form immense
heads of little young blossom buds, pressed close to¬
gether, and whitened by the shade of the embracing
leaves ; another shot out smaller heads of these same
buds, more dispersed, less shaded, and therefore greener.
Pigs and ducks, white butterflies, and children, say
what are the names of these varieties of the brassica, or
colewort. I dare say you little knew how closely were
related your friends the cabbage, cauliflower, and
broccoli, or what part it is of the last two that you eat.
In Germany, the cabbage is thought so entirely the
chief herb, that it is called kraut, the word for a vege¬
table, and there a preparation is made with it, which
would not be at all to our taste. It is kept in a tub,
till it becomes what we should consider fit for the pigs,
but the Germans think it excellent, and feast on it under
tire name of sour-kraut. Another colewort has lately
been brought from Germany, under the name of kohl-
rabbi, which swells its stem, a little way above ground,
into a great purple excrescence, like a fruit, of which
CRUCIFORM FLOWERS.
193
cattle in some places are said to be very fond. But there
is another, far better known, which makes the same
sort of swelling under ground, hanging small fibrous
roots down from it.
Do you know it ? Grown in gardens ; it is very good
food for ourselves, especially in broth, or with boiled
meat ; it is not at all bad eaten raw, and it can also,
upon occasion, be hollowed out into a lantern. In
fields, it is cultivated for the winter food of cows ; and
everyone lias seen a flock of sheep slowly progressing
across a great field, shut in by their hurdles till they
have properly finished the allotted portion for the day,
and left nothing but a few hollow old shells, in which
however the life is so strong, that uprooted as they lie,
the first warmth and damp of spring will make them
shoot out green leaves. Even piles which have been
housed, far from soil and light, put forth young shoots
in spring, which some people think particularly good.
The reason they sprout thus readily, is the quantity of
nourishment contained in that moist fleshy part of the
stem, which we call the turnip. They sometimes grow
very large ; and I have heard of an agricultural dinner
in Norfolk, where the pride of the farmers is to have
small cattle and large turnips, at which a round of beef
was served up, enclosed within a huge turnip.
The radish comes next in order after the turnip, and
most children who have had a little garden of their own,
have pleasant recollections of sowing the seed, thinning
the pretty young plants, and ending by filling a plate
with the beautiful crimson taper roots, so shining and
polished in water, so ornamental when disposed in
the rays of a circle, and so crisp and pungent to the
taste.
I dare say the mustard grew next to the radish in
13
194
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
those little beds, and perhaps you might have sown it
so as to form your initials, so as to see them springing
up in tender green on the brown earth. It wrill grow
almost anywhere, even upon flannel, or a cork, floating
in a soup-plate of water, where, I think, you would be
amused to watch the stem and root burst forth from the
seed. It will teach you the constant law, that every
seed puts out a root downwards, and a stem upwards.
Turn it upside down as you may, stem will always be
up, root always down. A different species of mustard
is grown at Durham and Tewkesbury, whose seeds are
made into that pungent compound which often brings
tears into the eyes of those who sting themselves a little
more than they intended. The mustard has a yellow
cruciform flower.
Water-cresses, growing cool and sheltered in clear
running streams, have a very small white blossom. I
don’t think country people care so much about them as
dwellers in towns, to whom their fresh green dampness
is a treat. It is pleasant to think how often a few
pence may have been earned in time of sore need by
some good little water-cress gatherer.
Almost all the cruciform plants have white or yellow
blossoms, and very few have such as make any show.
There is certainly the purple rocket in gardens ; and
wild, we have that flower which we prize for showing
its silver cross so early in spring, the cardamine, or
lady’s smock, or, as some call it, the cuckoo flower, be¬
cause it is scattered so freely over the meadows just
when the cuckoo sings.
Hedge-mustard, also called Jack-by-the-hedge, or
sauce-alone, is a tall plant, with flat heads of very
small white flowers and large leaves, that leave a very
unpleasant smell on the hands of those who touch it. It
CRUCIFORM FLOWERS.
195
looks best late in autumn, when its thin, brown, trans¬
parent silicles stand high in the hedge, lighted up by
the setting sun, as if nothing, however humble, that
has done its work well, was to be left without some
glory.
Another division of cruciform flowers do not bear the
long pod-like silicle, but have seed-vessels of various
shapes, some of them very pretty, such as the little
hearts of the tiny sheplierd’s-purse, which open on each
side to let out their treasure. It has a very small white
flower, and is now regarded in gardens as a trouble¬
some weed, though it was once esteemed as good for
medicine. Another of the same genus, the treacle-
mustard, has a long spike of seed-vessels, rounded at
the top, and turned upwards in a curious manner on
their stems.
Two more deserve mention, the candy-tuft in our
gardens, which comes from southern Europe, and the
tall lilac honesty, sometimes called moonwort, from the
circular form of its great flat seed-vessels — perfect
shields, to guard the plant, I supj)ose, in rendering to
earth its honest tribute of seed, in return for summer
moisture.
Most of this sober and estimable, though far from
brilliant family, are annual ; not one has wood or bark
like a tree, and scarcely one genus will live out of tem¬
perate climates.
196
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CLASS XVI. — BROTHERHOODS OF STAMENS,
The next three classes are arranged according to the
parcels, or brotherhoods, into which their stamens are
divided. The first of these, class xvi., or “ one brother¬
hood,” has all its stamens united into one column round
the pistil, the filaments having grown together at their
base, and only separating so as to hang out their nu¬
merous anthers.
There are several very interesting plants belonging
to this tribe, and the first which we will mention, be¬
cause it lias the fewest anthers, is one that has a
glorious name, the beautiful Passion Flower. It is a
South American plant, but will grow freely in Eng¬
land, so that even cottage walls may be wreathed with
its climbing stems, twisting tendrils, and hand-like
leaves. It is so curious, that I will give you a close
description of it, which you may compare with the
flower when it is in blossom. The calyx does not, as
usual, form the bud ; there are three large pale leaves,
or bracts, just outside, which fold over the blossom and
hide its mysteries till they are ready to unclose. With¬
in these are the corolla and calyx, each consisting of
five divisions, and so much of the same colour, that we
should take them all alike for petals, if botanists did not
tell us to think otherwise ; the calyx leaflets may be
distinguished from the petals by an odd little horn
growing on the back of each. Within is the especial
glory of the flower, a circle of fleshy threads, spreading
BROTHERHOODS OF STAMENS.
197
out like rays, and marked with brilliant blue, black,
crimson, and white. Some sorts have ring within ring,
growing gradually shorter, till they end round the
column in the centre, where on one stem, as it may be
called, grow both stamens and pistils, five yellow an¬
thers, arranged in a circle, and not, like other anthers,
opening their boxes of pollen downwards, but holding
them upwards. Why is this ? How is the pollen to
reach the germ, if it is not as usual poured down?
Behold, it is one of the beautiful contrivances in nature !
The germ is above the anther-box, instead of below ;
it is a little swelling on the top of the column, bearing
three large, round-headed stigmas, and in time will be¬
come a fleshy, egg-shaped, orange-coloured fruit, con¬
taining a number of seeds. Here, it does not often
ripen, and would not be very good if it did ; but in its
native home it is much esteemed, and called the Gre-
nadilla, or little pomegranate.
But the Spaniards, who first gave it the name, saw
more in it than its use to man, or its beauty and curious
structure. They deemed that a banner of the Redemp¬
tion had been planted by the Maker Himself, where no
Christian had set foot, as if in promise that the West
as well as the East should hear the tidings of salvation.
On the roofs of churches, or on shields borne by carved
angels, we often see represented the instruments of the
Passion of our Blessed Lord, the pillar where He was
scourged, the crown of thorns, the nails that rent His
flesh, and the five bleeding wounds with which He was
pierced ; and the parts of this flower reminded those
who named it of these representations. The column
within the flower they called the pillar ; the three
stigmas, the nails ; the five stamens, the wounds ; and
in the leaves and tendrils they saw other likenesses.
198
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
It was a very beautiful thought, and, no doubt, helped
many to pious recollections ; but remember one thing,
these resemblances must not be talked of lightly, or in
play, or you had better never have been told of them
at all. Look at the flower by yourself, and think of
the meanings gravely, or show them to any friend who
is in earnest and reverent ; but never chatter idly
about them, as if they were only something strange
and curious.
The next of these plants, with brotherly stamens, are
the cranes’ -bills. These follow the old rule of five :
five leaflets to the calyx, five heart-shaped petals, five
long and five short stamens, all closely joined round
the five-furrowed germ, five slender united styles, and
graceful stigmas. They are called cranes’-bills from
their seed-vessel, from which the styles project in one
long, brown, dry point, like the beak of a bird, until,
becoming quite ripe, they curl up, and open the germ,
whence the seed leaps out with a pop.
Their petals are most beautifully veined with little
vessels through which they breathe, that is, let the air
pass. All corollas have these vessels, but they are more
evident in the cranes’-bills than in most others, because
the texture is peculiarly delicate. The commonest of
all these is Herb Robert, the pink crane’s-bill that
grows in every hedge in autumn, putting out a pretty
veined flower, that sometimes is confused under the
general name of Robin, with the two lychnises of the
tenth class, Ragged Robin, and meadow campion,
though a little observation will soon show the difference.
Herb Robert is much more delicate than either, and has
always a bright red stein, and leaves much cut and
divided. The dove’s-foot crane’s-bill, which creeps about
in the dusty way-sides, has a still more elaborately
BROTHERHOODS OF STAMENS.
199
divided leaf ; I would defy the cleverest cutter of lace
paper to make anything so prettily-formed as its branch¬
ing leaves. The flower is very small, and pale pink,
and lias a smell of Indian ink. The beautiful pencilled
crane’s-bill is larger ; it is white, and its veins are
marked with delicate streaks of lilac, while its stigmas
form a beautiful tuft ; but the handsomest of all is the
great purple meadow crane’s-bill, which is to be found
in profusion in the northern and midland parts of Eng¬
land, though in the south it will only grow in gardens.
The Latin name of the crane’s-bill is Geranium, and
this was at first given to certain beautiful large cranes’ -
bills that were brought from the Cape, but afterwards
botanists considered that the cottony wings of the seeds
of the foreigners deserved to be made into another
genus, which they called Pelargonium. However, the
plants had become such household friends, that homely
people could not bring themselves to the new name,
so to this day we commonly call them geraniums. I
know nothing about their fine names, nor of the new
sorts that gardeners are always raising from seed, and
sending to shows. They are very grand, no doubt,
especially those that are sometimes exhibited at Chis¬
wick, as large as a currant bush, and covered with
blossoms all round ; but what I like, and look upon as
home friends and pets, are the precious old plants that
have stood for years and years in some window, prized,
perhaps, for the sake of the giver, or the old home from
which they have been brought, and, it may be, watered
and tended almost like children by some feeble old
lady who has hardly strength to totter from one flower¬
pot to another, to pull off their fragrant leaves as soon
as they have once shown a faded edge of yellow. Or
perhaps one geranium plant is the companion and
200
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
friend of some liard-working girl, who keeps it in her
town window to put her in mind of the green leaves
and kind friends she left far away in the country.
Those are the really choice geraneys, as the children
call them, far choicer than the new varieties that are
only cared for because they are new and scarce. Yet I
will not say that it is not a very nice pleasure in gar¬
dening to sow the seeds, and watch whether they will
come up some different kind, or the old original sort, to
which nine out of ten will return, though chosen from
very different plants.
The oldest kinds, from which all the rest have
sprung, are, I believe, the nutmeg geranium, a very
sweet-smelling one, the two upper petals red, and the
lower, white and streaked ; the oak-leaved, which has
a very deeply-lobed leaf, and a white blossom, spotted
with deep rich purple on the upper petals, though not
nearly so large as that fine, white, purple-marked kind,
which I admire the most of all the new ones ; and
lastly, the dear old horse-shoe, or scarlet geranium.
This everyone knows, for its dazzling head of brilliant
blossoms, and that most delicious of all leaves, so soft,
so downy, so elegantly shaped and cut, and so grace¬
fully marked with the dark line. Even grand gardeners
cannot do without it ; they train it to the top of tlieir
hot-houses, or pin it down in flower-beds, so as to make
it form one sheet of scarlet, almost too bright to look at.
The other brotherhoods are much larger families ; so
many as to be beyond counting, but as closely joined
as ever. The largest of these that we often see, is the
tall holyoak, a grand-looking plant brought from China,
and spiring up almost like a tree, with large leaves
below, and handsome great red, yellow, or white flowers
on a long spike, or even of a very dark colour, which is
BROTHERHOODS OF STAMENS.
201
sometimes called black, but only by way of a boast.
1 have never been able to find out the reason of the
name, holyoak ; I am inclined to believe it is two or
three Chinese words run together. The tuft of anthers
and stigmas are very handsome when the flower lias
not been doubled, and all grow out of a sort of rounded,
yet flattish germ. When the flower is faded, the tuft
shrivels up, and the germ, packed up in the five calyx-
leaflets, swells into a shape a good deal like a large
button, which some children call a cheese. If cut in
two, the parts are so regularly arranged, as to be like
a star.
Children like to eat the cheeses of our English
mallow, which is nearly related to the holyoak, and the
plant used to be much esteemed for use in medicine,
mallow leaves being thought very healing. We have
three wild sorts — the common, a lilac, striped darkly ;
the musk mallow, a pretty pale-pink, its leaves much
divided ; and the dwarf, white, striped with lilac, much
haunting dusty way-sides. There is a handsome
garden flower called the Malope, a very dark crimson,
coming from the Mauritius ; a shrub called the Althea ;
and a genus named Hibiscus, to which belongs a great
favourite of mine, the African Hibiscus, called Black-
eyed Susan, a primrose-coloured flower, with a very
deep dark eye. The seeds of this genus do not grow
into cheeses, but are round, and enclosed within a case.
All the tribe love sunshine, and shut up their petals at
night, or in bad weather.
202
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
CHAPTER XXV.
class xvi. — brotherhoods of stamens — continued.
We must not leave this class till we have mentioned
two plants that we have never seen, though none,
except the wheat, are of such daily use to us. I dare
say you scarcely have a garment on, at this moment,
some part of which is not composed of the first of these.
The cotton-plant, I mean, the plant which caused the
first Phoenicians, who sailed round the Cape, to be taken
for deceivers, when they reported that they had seen
wool growing on trees, as well as the sun in the north
at noon-day. We perceive in these days, that this
report of the voyage is the very proof that they had
really gone where they professed.
The cotton-plant is a shrub which naturally grows
to be about eight or ten feet high ; but where it is
grown for use, it is kept down to the height of a cur¬
rant bush. There are thirteen different kinds, one of
which is a creeper, and another a tree ; but the most
useful sort is the shrub. It bears a pretty yellow
flower, with a dark eye, and this gives place to a pod,
where the seeds are embedded in the soft white sub¬
stance, which we call cotton-wool. You know it, I
dare say, and keep your treasures in it, your tender
shells, or little glass curiosities ; or you peep in at
brooches lying on a bed of it ; or, possibly, if you ever
scalded or burnt your finger, it lias been packed up in
it to keep out the air. This cotton-wool has, however,
been carefully cleaned, and all the seeds picked out ; I
have seen some as it came fresh from the pod, looking
BROTHERHOODS OF STAMENS.
203
much rougher, and less white. Perhaps, however,
this acquired its dirt in the packing, for it comes to
England in great canvass sacks, two or three yards
long, and more than a yard in width. A man gets
into this great bag, which is kept open by being
fastened to posts, and is supplied with cotton, which he
treads down as hard as possible, trampling on it, and
forcing it into every corner, till he rises gradually on it
to the top, and light as cotton is, one bag holds three or
four hundred pounds.
Cotton is grown in almost every hot country ; in so
many indeed, that it is not worth while to count them
up. It is manufactured in great quantities in England,
and those children are happy who have only to do with
the wearing, instead of the spinning and weaving. In
former times, poor children were dreadfully overwork¬
ed, and though much has been done by law to prevent
them from being kept in the cotton-mills for too many
hours a day, it must be a sad thing to live in the din of
machinery, and in close narrow streets, instead of plea¬
sant country homes. However, we know —
“ That Love’s a flower that will not die
For lack of leafy screen ;
And Christian hope may cheer the eye
That ne’er saw vernal green.”
And there is nothing really to prevent a manufacturing
child from being as good as a country child ought to be,
though there are, I am afraid, many more temptations
in its way.
It is only within the last fifty years that cotton has
become so cheap and common ; and it is a very good
thing in one way, since no one has any excuse now for
not being clean, as they had when there was nothing
but linen, which, though stronger and better, cannot
204
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
be made so cheaply. Ask any elderly person to tell
you the price that Sunday dresses used to be, and it
will surprise you, though you will generally hear them
say, at the same time, that those gowns would wear
out half-a-dozen of such as we have now. And they
were certainly much prettier and better printed, as old
patch-work will testify. I could show you such roses,
and such a choice pattern of strange, indescribable
things, which I have studied many an hour before it
was time to get up ; besides the old inherited scraps
that are still kept in a bag, where they were long ago
stored, as too beautiful and precious to be cut or
used.
India was the first place where cotton was much used
for clothing, as the name of calico, from the town of
Calicut, reminds us ; while muslin was named from
Mosul, on the Tigris. Though we make muslins here,
they are still not equal to those which are woven in
India, by men with a hand-loom ; and afterwards em¬
broidered, likewise by men, who walk about with the
delicate muslin rolled round their body, and often so
begrimed, that it is wonderful how it can ever be made
clean again. The Indian princes wear turbans of
muslin so fine, and of such a length, that it takes
twenty years to make one ; and as to their wives,
they expect their muslin robes to be of so fine a tex¬
ture, that the whole dress can be drawn through a
ring.
Last of all these brotherly plants, we must speak of
tea. Everyone knows whence it comes, so I will not
stop to tell that. It is a shrubby plant, with a pale
pink blossom, and is grown in great plantations. The
young leaves, when they are first put out in spring, are
gathered carefully, and no one is allowed to use these
BROTHERHOODS OF STAMENS.
205
but the emperor himself. The next crop, the Chinese
keep for themselves, and only sell us the coarser leaves,
which they gather at the time of the grand stripping
of the trees. Then not a leaf is left, and as some of
the trees grow wild, out of reach, on the mountains,
the cunning Chinese have a way of getting at them
which you would never have guessed at. There are
plenty of monkeys in those hills, and the Chinese go
out and pelt them with sticks and stones, which so pro¬
vokes them, that they break off boughs of the tea trees
to return the compliment to the men, who gladly pick
up the prize and strip off the leaves.
The leaves are brought into the shrivelled, twisted
state in which we have them, by being laid on hot plates
over a furnace. It has always been a question whether
the green and black teas are really different sorts, or
whether the green is coloured by being dried on copper
plates, or by some colouring matter. I believe the
truth is, that there is a real green kind, but that it is
rare, and they generally sell us the false, painted green
tea.
For their own use, they make the tea up into balls,
or fagots of small twisted sticks, and instead of using
a tea-pot, they put one of these little parcels into a cup,
and pour boiling water over it. The cups are often of
beautifid porcelain, each in a fillagree gold and silver
case. They use no milk nor sugar with it, and a tray
of these pretty little cups of strong tea is carried round
to welcome every visitor.
As to the old tea leaves, they make them up in the
shape of bricks, and sell them to the Tartars, and though
this is poor stuff, it is the best the Tartars can get, and
they are so fond of it as to be ready to take it in pay¬
ment for anything they sell to the Chinese.
206
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
It was not till very modern days that tea was known
in Europe. Mary Beatrice, the wife of James II., was
the first of our queens who drank tea ; and it was only
a treat among great ladies for a long time. In com¬
mon, people breakfasted on beer or such strong drinks,
or else on milk-porridge ; and there are many stories
of ladies, in the country, not knowing what to do with
the first tea they saw : how one boiled a whole pound,
and tried to cat the leaves with butter and salt ; and
another tried boiling it in milk, and throwing avTay the
liquor, while she, too, thought the leaves the part to
be used.
And now, it would hardly seem like a real morning
or evening meal without the tea-pot ; the labourer takes
his bottle of cold tea into the harvest field ; and the old
woman in her cottage has the tea-pot on the table, and
the kettle on the fire, all day long. Nay, “tea” is a
name that marks the hour of the day, and the tea-table
is the very centre of home, when families are most apt
to be all together, all resting, and all at ease, and if
there is one absent, it is the very time to be missed.
Or if one is unwell and up-stairs, what a time it is for
friendly messages and attendance ; and how happy and
important some little nurse feels in taking that first
lesson in steadiness and trustworthiness, the carrying
the full cup, step after step, without one drop spilling
over.
And shall we say anything to school children about
tea- drinkings ? Oh ! we have said too much already
to enter on those delights !
207
CHAPTER XXVI.
CLASS XVIII. — ORANGES.
The butterfly-flowers form the seventeenth class, which
have their stamens in two brotherhoods, or more pro¬
perly, all the filaments form but one party, except a
single one, which remains separate, in order that the
pod may have room to grow. As we went through
the butterfly race before, we need say no more about
them now, but go on to the next, class xviii., the many
brotherhoods.
There is only one English genus belonging to this
class, namely, the St. John’s worts, so called because
they blossom about St. John’s Day, at Midsummer.
The largest species is called Park leaves, and raises its
handsome head above a long straight stem, clothed with
leaves in regular alternate pairs, in almost every shrub¬
bery ; the next largest, named Tutsan, from the French
word Toute-sain , all-heal, grows wild by the sides of
woods, and has a blossom about the size of a primrose.
The lesser kinds grow on every hedgerow, heath, and
wood. All have brilliant yellow blossoms, divided into
five petals, a larger swelling germ, crowned by three
stigmas, and an infinite number of stamens, joined to¬
gether at the bottom in little tufts or bunches, so that
you cannot pull out one without the rest of the family.
They hold together, as the old man in the fable taught
his sons to do, by the example of the fagot of sticks ;
and the hair-like filaments crowned with dots spread
out their multitude, like a glory round the flower. The
fruit is a red berry of a conical shape, which you may
208
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
often see in the tutsan, and which stains the fingers so
red, that the old English name of the plant was man’s
blood. The leaves are very curious, as you will see if
you hold them up to the light. They are full of very
small dots, just like little holes ; indeed, one kind is
actually called the perforated St. John’s wort; but these
are not really holes, only little vessels filled with oil,
which gives out a strong smell if you rub the leaf.
This perforated St. John’s wort is a very pretty
plant, much more slender and graceful than the square
St. John’s wort, knoAvn by its very hard square stem.
The small upright kind is the especial beauty, growing-
on heaths, like a little golden star or spangle, on its
slight crimson stem ; perhaps, if late in autumn, bear¬
ing a small red fruit. Nor is the creeping kind to be
despised, as it twists and stretches over wettish places,
though not so deep in the bog as the next sort, the
marsh St. John’s wort, which never opens its blossoms
wide, and has rough leaves, so unlike the other kinds,
that it is not at first easy to tell that it belongs to
the same genus, all the rest having their character so
strongly marked.
The only other genus to be mentioned in the eigh¬
teenth class is not English. It is the citron, or orange
family, and is not even European by nature. Such
of you as know anything will be surprised at this,
for you hear of Lisbon oranges, and Seville oranges,
and Malta oranges, and, perhaps, even of the orange
groves of Spain and Italy. But though old books have
told us pretty clearly all that the Greeks and Romans
ate and drank, and we know how the Romans brought
their corn from Sicily, and their wine from Falernae,
and even their oysters from Britain, we never hear
anything about oranges. Now and then, indeed, there
ORANGES.
209
is some liint of golden apples. It was a golden apple,
according to the fable, that was to be given to the
fairest of the three goddesses. Golden apples were
said to grow in the gardens of the Hesperides, beyond
Mount Atlas, and in the race between a youth and the
swiftest maiden upon earth, she was turned from her
course by the golden apples which he threw down be¬
fore her. Who knows if some stray orange had not
come in the sight of the Greeks to cause these stories ?
either brought by the Arabs from its native home in
China, or by some bold Phoenician mariner from the
Fortunate Isles in the western ocean, about which they
had many strange stories, and which we call the
Canaries. Orange trees were growing there before
the Portuguese visited them, and some of the best in
the world grow there now, round the base of that great
sugar-loaf, the Peak of Teneriffe, which I should guess
to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.
The best oranges for eating that we get, come from
St. Michael’s, a little island of the Azores ; but there
are many others imported from Spain and Portugal.
The red-juiced blood oranges grow in Malta, and the
delicious, fragrant little Mandarin orange, is chiefly
grown at Tangier. To all these places they were first
brought in the 14th or 15tli centuries from China, their
original birth-place.
I suppose there is not an English child who does
not know the taste of an orange, but very few know
the appearance of an orange tree, for only a few are
grown in hot-liouses, and not many children can go to
see them there. However, if you wish to see what
sort of leaves it has, you need only soav the pips of the
next orange you eat, in a pot of earth, and keep it all
the winter in the window of a room with a fire in it,
14
210
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
and iii time you will see it raise a shoot, with hand¬
some, dark-green, polished leaves, evergreen, and like
the St. John’s wort, full of little vessels of oil, where
resides the delightful scent. I once raised three little
orange trees from pips, and kept one of them some
years till it was a foot high ; then I gave it to a lady
who had a green-house, and I don’t know what became
of it afterwards. Orange trees are very beautiful in the
warm climates that suit them ; they grow higher than
an apple tree, and spread out their rich dark-green
foliage, mixed with the white flower. The calyx is a
little cup with five teeth ; the corolla is in five white
petals, fleshy, full of vessels of fragrant oil, and some¬
times dotted with green ; the stamens are not many,
but grow united into little bundles out of a ring round
the base of the round swelling germ. The stigma is
green, and the anthers bright yellow, and altogether
the whole appearance of the flower, with its sweet
odour, has something wonderfully delightful about it.
In some places, where it grows commonly, a wreath
of the natural flowers is worn over the bride’s veil at
her marriage.
As soon as the white blossoms fade, the little cells of
the germ begin to grow, and the whole germ, losing its
stigma, becomes a round green ball, taking a whole
year to come to perfection, and hanging on the tree
long after it is ripe, so that it is the especial beauty of
this exquisite tree to bear, all at once, the white flowers,
with the green and the golden fruit, its promise and
performance both visible together.
No wonder the orange is so long in growing, for
there is a whole workshop within its case, and you can
see for yourself the result of all the strange things that
happen there. The rind, full of little bags of oil, loosens
ORANGES.
211
and separates itself, while a thick white coat grows op
within it, the cells, containing the seeds, enlarge ; and
not only this, but there grow forward, into them, a
number of very small bags, or bottles, each filled with
pulp, which, as the fruit ripens, becomes juice, first very
sour, then sweeter. What is the use, you will say, of this
juice being parted into so many little bags ? It is another
proof of the wisdom of the Hand that made the orange ;
such, that it may be carried long distances, and brought
to be the refreshment of thirsty lips, so many miles from
the sun that ripens it. Why does the bee store its
honey in such little cells ? Do you know ? Perhaps
you will say its suits the bee to have store-houses no
bigger than itself, and so it does ; but do you know
what happens when honey is put away in large jars?
If the weather be warm, it ferments and turns sour,
but though the bee-hive is a very hot place, the honey
never ferments in its own little six-sided jars. So it is
with the orange, its juice, if it were all together, would
soon be spoilt by the heat, but in these separate bottles
it is safely secured, a little in one and a little in the
other, and kept good till we want it. The cells are the
cloves of the orange into which our fingers can divide
it ; the bags are the fine net-work within them, much
more easily discerned in a bad orange than in a good
one. The actual seeds everyone knows ; but does it not
show that oranges were made for our especial benefit,
that there should be so many without pips, so as to be
of no use at all, excepting for food ? Another arrange¬
ment, to fit the orange for travelling long distances, is
the oil in the little dots in the peel, which keeps it
fresh, though separated from the tree, as well as the
thick, strong, yellow coat, lined with white, so much
less tender than the covering of apples, pears, plums, or
such fruits as are eaten on the spot.
212
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Thus you see how our Father’s gracious Providence
has made this delicious fruit such as can be spread over
the whole earth, eaten in this country even more uni¬
versally than our native fruits, and more refreshing,
perhaps, than any other. Who that has ever been ill
does not remember the pleasant, juicy, sharp sweetness,
coming so refreshingly, or the delicious taste of the
orange squeezed into water, the nicest of all drinks?
I am sure, if people would only think a little, they
would see that the commonness and cheapness of the
orange, is a thing to be very thankful for, prepared as
it is for our use and delight.
Delight, some of you null say, who like play better
than eating, and who enjoy the sight of the basket
(so called,) made of the orange, or its cloves divided
into a flower, or its rind turned into a bowl. By-tlie-
bye, I hope, if ever you are obliged to eat an orange with¬
out a plate, that you don’t throw its rind where it may be
an unpleasant sight, and perhaps the means of a bad fall.
Oranges come to England packed in large cases,
which you sometimes see at fruiterers’ shops, with laths
bent over the top to protect them. The pale-coated,
sour-juiced lemon, which gives so pleasant a flavour to
puddings, grows in company with it on Mediterranean
coasts ; the lime, the smallest of the race, is wild in
India, and its juice is most delicious. The shaddock is
another Indian fruit ; and there is another kind some¬
times brought here, and very large and handsome, to
which some thoughtless person lias irreverently given
the name of forbidden fruit. I hope if ever it comes in
your way you will not make nonsense about its name,
as I have heard of some silly people doing. Of course
it has nothing to do with the real fruit of the tree of
knowledge, and there is no harm in eating it, but there
ORCHISES.
213
is great harm in talking lightly of the sin for which
every one of us is suffering.
The citron was brought to Europe from Assyria and
Media, before even the orange. It is hardier, and I
have seen one tree growing in the open air in a warm
sunny place. It will ripen its fruit in hot-houses, and is
often preserved ; but the chief use of it is in its thick
delicious rind, which affords such tit-bits in mince-pies,
plum-puddings, and those cakes, all white outside, all
dark inside, which on twelfth-days, christening-days,
and wedding-days, are said by the wise to be too rich
to be eaten. And well for the foolish if they are only
allowed that “enough” which is “ as good as a feast.”
No, I don’t call them foolish if, of themselves, they
only take enough, for to be temperate in all things is
part of the highest wisdom. Happy the child who
does not think the citron and the plums the best part
of the feast — no, nor even the almond paste. I won¬
der whether you and I should agree as to what the
best part of the festival is.
Of class xix. you will find an account under the
name of compound flowers.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CLASS. XX. — ORCHISES.
One of the first glad sights of merry spring are certain
stars of long, narrow, pointed leaves, spreading on the
ground, growing one within the other, and often orna¬
mented by bright spots of black. By-and-bye a little
bud appears in the middle, veiled in a thin silvery case.
It grows and it grows, till it bursts its sheath, and up¬
lifts a fat fleshy stem, bearing a purple spike of long-
214
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
tailed flowers, pleasant to behold in the green copse-
wood among blue-bells and primroses, and brilliantly
setting off the cowslips and mary golds that are apt to
be the chief groundwork of May garlands.
A nice old English name for these flowers was long-
purples ; but village people generally call them by the
disagreeable name of dead-men’s-hands, because they
have a root of two long narrow tubers, (one dies, and
they form a fresh one every year,) and thus most edu¬
cated people know them best by their Latin name of
Orchis. They belong to the twentieth class.
I don’t think any plants, that I know, are so difficult
to understand as these, but I will do my best to explain
their structure, for it is very remarkable. The spike
consists of a number of blossoms, each growing on what
appears a thick stem, with a long purple leaf at its foot.
This stem is in fact the germ ; you see it is curiously
twisted, and if it was cut in two and magnified, you
would find it full of young seeds. The corolla is a
wonderful thing. Behind stretches a long hollow tail,
a spur, as it is called ; hanging down in front a lip, a
three-notched petal, beautifully streaked and spotted
with white, black, and purple ; at the sides are two
other petals, which seem to protect the rest, and are
called the wings, and between them are three very small
petals, closing together, so as to form a little helmet, the
casque. The middle one of these three bends over a
dark-purple thing, thick and flesliy-looking. With a
magnifying-glass you can, if you have clever eyes, and
fingers handy in using a pin, discover that this is divided
down the middle by a sort of seam ; then pulling open
the seam, you will find the purple covering is a case for
two small olive-green things, shaped more like a comma
than anything else. These are the pulp in wffiich the
ORCHISES.
215
pollen resides, and the purple case is in fact the anther.
Filament there is none, and the germ, we have seen,
serving the purpose of a footstalk, while the top of its
stigma forms a fleshy white cup, opening upwards under
the anther. Was there ever a stranger construction ?
all the parts seem upside down. We should never have
found them if botanists had not taught us, and here
even more than in the compound flowers we should
have fancied that there was neither pistil nor stamen ;
and which of the parts of the flower are to be called
calyx, and which corolla, people are not agreed, though
the wings are generally termed the calyx.
The orchises, even in the commonest forms, are the
strangest of all flowers, if this wonderful structure is
examined. We have several kinds, to be found almost
everywhere. The earliest, with the black-spotted
leaves, is the purple-orchis ; and, for old friendship’s
sake, I like it best of all, connected as it is with May
walks, and cuckoos’ songs, and pleasant woods, where
a little damp makes its purple spikes rise high, and
densely covered, growing at a little distance apart, and
luring one on through bramble and tangle in the search,
and varied in endless shades of lilac, from deep dark
purple to almost pink. The worst of it is, that a number
of them together in water have an unpleasant smell.
A little later, the pretty little green-winged meadow-
orchis springs up all over our pastures, in company
with cowslips. Its wings are always pale green striped
with brown, but its lip is sometimes very dark purple,
sometimes very pale rose-colour, sometimes even white,
and though a sturdy little plant, there is hardly a
prettier May flower. In the marshy meadows, there
blossoms at the same time the large, tall, noble-look¬
ing, broad-leaved-orcliis, its blossoms usually rather a
216
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
red shade of the orchis purple, though varying very
much. You may know it from the rest by the length
and brown colour of the bracts, or leaves that grow at
the foot of the germs, as well as by the breadth of the
tapering leaves. Later, there follows it the aromatic-
orchis, very red, very sweet, its spike very long, and
its spurs of a most disproportionate length ; and some¬
times you may find the pyramidal-orchis, which looks
as if some one had pulled all the blossoms of the
aromatic-orchis up to the top of the stalk into one
bunch, shaped like a half-opened mushroom, with a
peak. In woods there come, at the same time, the
spotted- orchis, a very pretty one, its long narrow leaves
very thickly dotted with black, and its white flowers
with delicate purple, and sometimes, though less com¬
monly, the butterfly-orchis. I cannot tell why it is
so called, as it is not in the least like a butterfly,
though perhaps it might be compared to certain slen¬
der, delicate-looking white moths. You cannot mis¬
take it when once you see it. It is very unlike any¬
thing but itself, and though hardly to be called beauti¬
ful, has a peculiar grace of its own, in its large, loose,
airy, white spike, its long streamer-like white lips, its
taper greenish wings, and very long curving spurs,
twisting and crossing each other in a sort of zigzag
pattern ; above all, there is the pure sweet scent, which
is more charming in the evening. It always seems
like a lady of the woods. It is also called the honey¬
suckle-orchis, because of its delicious smell, a good
deal like a honeysuckle ; and the two -leaved-orchis,
because half-way up the stem grow a pair of oval
leaves, spreading one on each side. These are not
true leaves, only bracts, and you see they have not the
branching mid-rib and net-work, but have the long
ORCHISES.
217
ribbon-like veins going lengthways, as those growing
from the root have ; like the lily and grass-kind, and
all the plants which have but one cotyledon, and shoot
up in sheaths.
These are the most frequent of the true orchises,
all of which have spurs. The other families of this
tribe are without spurs, though other parts of the
structure resemble those already described, and very
curious some of them are. The tway-blade, so called
from having two such oval leaves as the butterfly-
orchis, grows in much the same places, but is not of
the same fleshy substance. It has a four-cleft lip, that
seems to hang out the sign of the little green man,
with its two arms and two legs, and yellow head ; but
this is not near so like as the man-tway-blade, pro¬
perly so called, is said to be. Of this, however, I
cannot judge, since I never saw it. The bird’s-nest-
orcliis is a very strange plant, growing under beech
trees, which allow scarcely anything else to come
near them, in their strong desire to keep their domain
tidy, and allow no litter under their branches ; but
this little plant comes up under the lordly shade of
their arching boughs, nay, even close to their smooth
univied trunks ; and as if to elude their observation, it
wears the livery of their own dead leaves, and while
in its full prime, is as brown — blossom, stem, and all —
as if it had been dead for months. As to leaves, it
attempts none, it is only glad to find sufferance for its
brown petals in the deep glades of the beecli-wood.
In dry pastures grow the lady’s-tresses, a pretty little
low plant with blossoms where the wings are pure white,
and the lip green, the flowers twisting in a spiral line
round the spike, and I suppose owing their name to
their way of growth being in the line of the waves of a
218
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
lady’s hair. I fancy this must be the flower that vil¬
lage children’s rhyme means : — •
“ Daffodils and daisies,
Rosemary and tresses,
All the girls in our town
Must curtsey to the ladies ;
The bushes so high, the bushes so low,
Please, my lady, stoop under the hough 1”
The children always say it “ traisies ,” but as there
is no such word, I suspect it once meant tresses. Do
you know the game the rhyme belongs to? Four
little girls stand together, the arms of two crossed over
those of the other pair, and sing it together. When
they come to the curtseying, they all curtsey, and at
the stooping under the bough, the under pair bend
under the arms of the others, and come within, so as
to be inclosed between them, and then they all jump
till they can hold together no longer.
I don’t know whether you can understand this de¬
scription, so we will go back to the lady’s-tresses. If
you find them at all, it will be in quantities ; but the
strange thing is, that though they are not annual, and
grow in ground by no means liable to be disturbed,
they show their faces only now and then ; they will
come up one year, and not be seen again for four or
five, or else make their appearance on some lawn,
where no one ever expected them.
Helleborine has long leaves and bracts, and a pret¬
tily-jagged lip. The broad-leaved kind grows in dry
wood ; the marsh helleborine has a white under-lip,
jagged and edged with red ; the large white hellebo¬
rine, a great beauty, looks at first sight like a lily, but
is not common.
I have kept to the last the choicest English orclii-
deous plants, the ophrys kind, the lip of which is
ORCHISES.
219
arranged, as if for the very purpose of affording us
sport, in forms like those of insects. Prettiest of all
is the bee-ophrys, its downy, velvety, curved lip, dark
brown mottled with yellow, and its pale lilac wings,
streaked with green, affording a most curious likeness
of a bee about to settle on a flower. They are just
sufficiently rare to make the discovery of them delight¬
ful. I shall never forget the ecstacy of my first sight
of one on a mossy bank, in a little copsewood dell, two
bees full out, and another just coming ; it was a scream
of joy indeed with which I flew at it. A few more I
have found ; the best mine of them was an old chalk¬
pit, now destroyed, and now and then they are met
Avith in dry pastures ; but I suspect them of the caprices
of my lady’s-tresses, for where I find them one year, it
is almost certain that there they will not be the next.
The fly-ophrys I have but once seen, and then it was
not growing, but freshly gathered. It looked like a
house-fly cut out of dark puce velvet, a blue spot on its
back, and, if I remember right, with jet-black eyes.
The spider-ophrys I have never seen.
But these wonders of our own do not approach to
what may be seen in foreign lands, especially in South
America. There grows a plant, looked on and named
in the same spirit as the passion-flower, as another
stamp and token of the Christian faith, set by the hands
of its Author, the beautiful orchid, called by the Spa¬
niards of Panama, the Espiritu Santo , because it is just
like a hovering dove of the purest white, a fit emblem
indeed for Whit- Sunday.
Another dove-orchis grows there likewise, a large, tall
plant, with flowers like a white dove on her nest, her head
turned back and her wings slightly raised and touched
with purple. Another orchid is like a whole shower
220
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
of pale purple and white butterflies, coming down from
a bough, and this, like many of the tribe, is a parasite ;
that is, it grows on the limbs of trees, like mistletoe ;
while there is another kind more like sticks of coral
than anything else, the whole plant being of the most
glowing scarlet, except the flowers, which are deep
purple. These four I have seen in liot-houses, and
marvelled at ; there are many more that are grown in
the same manner in England, and that a few lucky
people are able to go and admire, but what must they
not be in their own home ?
Some grow from the earth ; some hang down from
the trees ; some sit on rocks amid moss ; some beautify
the decaying and fallen trees, and their perfume fills
the woods at night. Their forms are beyond every¬
thing astonishing. The monkey, the mosquito, the
ant, are only a few of them ; there are hovering birds
and every wondrous shape, so that travellers declare
that the life-time of an artist would be too short to give
pictures of all the kinds that inhabit the valleys of Peru
alone.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CLASS XXI _ DIVIDED FAMILIES.
All the first twenty classes of plants follow the practice
we should have thought most convenient, of keeping
all their parts, both stamens and pistils, in the same
flower; but the three next have a strange custom of
dividing them in different blossoms — one bearing all
the stamens, another all the pistils. The stamen¬
bearing flower perishes and leaves nothing behind it,
DIVIDED FAMILIES.
221
as soon as the pollen has been scattered from it, but
the pistil swells, and in time becomes fruit or seed-
vessel.
The twenty-first class has these pistil and stamen-
bearing flowers upon different branches of the same
plant, generally the pistil-bearing growing somewhat
under the stamen-bearing, that they may the more
readily catch the pollen. Sometimes the fertile and
barren blossoms are so much alike that we only dis¬
cover the difference by peeping closely into them with
botanical eyes ; sometimes they are so unlike that we
can hardly believe in their near relationship. Most
forest trees belong to this family ; and we may observe
that in most cases, though not in all, the plants which
have this strange arrangement are such as are not much
esteemed for them fruit, and which have other means of
becoming multiplied besides the seed, since its formation
must be less certain that when all the parts needed for
it are close together in one case instead of depending on
the busy bees or the winds to bring the pollen from the
anther to the germ. However, the first genus I see stand¬
ing in the list makes me glad that I said in most cases,
not in all, for it is the bread-fruit tree which grows in
the South Sea Islands. I daresay you have wit enough
to guess that the tree does not exactly bear loaves of
bread ready baked ; and yet it is not very unlike them,
for the fruit is as large as a baby’s head, and when it
has been baked, and the outer rind peeled off, there is
left a yellow covering like crust, and a white substance
within, something like crumb. Never having seen the
bread-fruit anywhere but in a print, I will pass on to a
race that we all of us have seen, but whether we have
noticed, depends on whether we have followed the ex¬
ample of eyes or of no eyes.
222
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Those odd things called spurge are what I mean.
There are two sorts which you may have often pulled
up as weeds in your garden — the sun spurge, and the
small spurge ; both are plants of a very regular growth,
their stalks full of milk wherever you break them, their
leaves bluish, and their blossoms yellowish green. It
is this milkiness of the plant that is the distinguishing
mark of the spurges, the juice has that taste which is
called acrid, and was formerly used to remove warts,
from which the plant has derived the name of wart-
weed. The stem is always regularly forked and
branched, in some kinds almost like the umbelliferous
plants. In the lesser spurge there are two regular
stages of stems, springing out like spokes, and with
three long narrow leaves at each starting point. The
upper umbel bears from three to four little green
flowers, some with very minute single stamens, others
with round swelling pistils. There are pretty little
yellow crescents in the flowers, which at first sight we
should take for curiously-shaped anthers, but which are
in reality nectaries. This small spurge has long, narrow,
lance-shaped leaves ; those of the sun spurge are more
nearly heart-shaped, and form pretty little cups round the
small flowers. There is a larger sort growing in the
woods, and named the wood spurge ; it is less milky,
and has a red shrubby stem, very neat regular green
cups, and pretty yellow crescent nectaries. It comes
with the primroses and blue-bells, and looks spring¬
like and friendly. Another small sort is found in corn¬
fields, and there is one sometimes cultivated in old gar¬
dens, and called, from the regularity of its alternate
leaves, Jacob’s ladder, and sometimes caper. They are
not a very interesting race, and I only mention them
because they are so common. In the southern hemi-
DIVIDED FAMILIES.
223
sphere these spurges grow to a great size, and become
forest trees, figuring in books by their Latin name of
Euphorbia.
Some few grasses do not keep their stamens and
pistils in the same blossom, and one of these is the
beautiful maize, or Indian corn. Many children like to
grow it in their gardens as a curiosity, so perhaps you
may be able to examine it. The stamens, you see, grow
in a spike of blossom, much like that of other grasses ;
the fertile flowers are out of sight, closely folded up in
those long swelling sheaths of leaves that branch out on
the sides of the stem, and from which hangs out a tassel
or plume, or whatever you please to call it, of whitish
green hairs, or strings. This is the wonderful arrange¬
ment for allowing the pollen to reach the germs, which
otherwise it could never do, enclosed as they are in
their double rolls of leaf. If you pull to pieces one of
these sheaths, you will find the soft, fleshy, green re¬
ceptacle, covered with odd little flowers, from each of
which depends one of these long hairs, a sort of mer¬
maid’s wig. As autumn comes on, the germs harden
into large round grains, either red or yellow — every one,
that is to say, whose streamer has properly conducted
its pollen, for on some cobs, especially near the bottom,
we sometimes find that some have failed and died away.
A perfect cob is a beautiful thing, with the long lines
of rich amber-coloured grains, close together, and as
regular as lines of beads, and the whole plant is very
handsome. Some kinds are of very quick growth. In
our own garden we had a giant sort, one leaf of which
grew nine inches in one day. The plant was at least
eight feet high, and the cobs, which had red grains,
were very long and handsome. It is an American
plant, and was found cultivated in Peru when it was
first discovered. It served the inhabitants instead of
224
THE HERB OF TIIE FIELD.
wheat, and was so highly honoured by them that they
had in the treasures of the Temple of the Sun a figure
of it, with the leaves and beard of silver, and the grains
of gold. The Spaniards brought the maize home, and
it is much grown all over the southern parts of the
continent, where they are pleased to call it Turkish
wheat. Here in England it is not used sufficiently to
make it be cultivated in great quantities. The bread
made from it is not as good as wheaten bread, and the
chief use of it is to feed turkeys on the grains or the
meal, and horses are sometimes fed on the leaves. The
English horses in the Peninsular war learnt to know
it well.
In America it is also extensively grown, and the
harvest of large cobs in their leafy sheaths is said to
be exceedingly rich-looking and beautiful. The green
cobs in their unripe state are there considered as a
great dainty, either raw or boiled, and both man and
beast live much upon the maize flour. The picking the
grains out of the cobs is a grand employment in the
winter, especially for the women and children.
Those near relatives of the grasses, the sedges, and
some of the reeds, belong to this class. Do you know
any river or pool where grows the great bulrush, or. as
the riddle says, at certain seasons it is dangerous to
walk? Fine fellows are they; sometimes known by
the names of cat’s-tail, or reed-mace, but I like best to
call them bulrushes, and you may know why in one
moment, though, of course, it is not to be supposed that
the little reed-woven ark where the infant prophet slept
safely, as he floated among the monsters in the Nile
waters, could be of the same bulrush that we see in our
streams.
No monsters are found in the haunts of our bulrushes,
DIVIDED FAMILIES.
225
the dragon-flies do indeed flit round them, and settle on
their long leaves, to devour their prey, but the other
dwellers in their pools are all harmless. The moor¬
hen’s damp cradle is found in their shelter, the dab-
chick swims under their tall leaves with her tiny brood,
and the water-rat dives and rises, peering round with
keen black eyes.
You little girls have little chance of gathering for
yourselves one of these grave mace-bearers of the armies
of flags and spears. You must get some big brother, who
cares little for wet, to plunge in after them ; and most
likely he will be glad to make a commotion among all
those dwellers in the pools, and send them splashing
and diving their different ways. I hope he will not
forget to bring you back one of our clubs, a tall stem,
long, narrow, tapering leaves, and bearing the large
round mace, somewhat of the size and shape of a candle,
with a wick as long as itself. Early in the season the
club part, which consists in reality of the fertile flowers,
is of a greenish brown, while the upper slenderer por¬
tion, which I called the wick, is covered with long an¬
thers, growing quite close together. By August, these
have scattered their pollen and withered away, leaving
only their stalk, looking broken and rough, but making
a good finish to the club, which has become of a very
deep dark brown colour, and soft plush-like texture.
By-and-bye all the little downy seeds of which it con¬
sists will break out and fly away, to sow the bulrushes
of next year.
The bur reeds are to be found by banks of rivers, in
places much like the haunts of the bulrush. They
have branching stems, bearing a number of little balls
— some all yellow, consisting of stamens — some all
brown, or all green ; the pistils with white stigmas, the
15
226
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
leaves lance-shaped, and the whole plant very hand¬
some, often with a large black fat sing enjoying him¬
self on the back of a leaf.
Here, too, you will find the sedges — plenty of them —
for there are sixty-two English kinds, many of them
very common by river-sides and in woods. You would
be apt at first sight to call them grasses, but, though
their first cousins, they belong to a different family, and
are of no use to man, whereas grasses are most valuable.
They are known by always having a three-cornered
stem, remarkably harsh to the touch, and no wonder,
for it is full of silex, the substance that gives hardness
to flint stones. This is very wonderful, but I cannot
explain it. The leaves do not, like those of the grasses,
form the stem itself, though they seem at first sight to
do so, for they are rolled round the stem at the lower
part, and sheathe it. They are generally ofa pale yel¬
lowish green, suiting the autumn tints, when the wood
sedges usually blossom. The flowers grow in separate
spikes, the fertile ones the lowest down, and generally
all green, consisting of small chaffy scales, protecting a
hairy, bottle-shaped, two-divided germ, with three
stigmas. The barren spikes are much prettier, for
their scales are dark brown or black, and their anthers
hang from them in multitudes, of yellow or sulphur
colour. A spike in full flower, bowing in its graceful
manner its soft yellow plume, between two darkened
unopened spikes on the bending stem, presents so
pretty a mixture of colour, that I wonder we do not
oftener see it in river-side nosegays. In every blossom
of this thick scaly head are three stamens, for the sedge
is as constant to the rule-of-tliree as its relations the
grass and the rush.
Every class has some relations among these divided
DIVIDED FAMILIES.
227
families. Among those of the fourth class, are the water-
loving alder, and the evergreen box. And what do you
think I am going to set you to examine now? Don’t scream
when I tell you it is the nettle ! yes, the stinging nettle !
Take hold of it boldly ; squeeze it well ; does it sting ?
No ! how is that? Ila ! I hear a little outcry — so you are
stung after all. Yes, but not by the stem which you
are grasping, but by a leaf which has lightly touched
your hand. Is this because the leaves sting and not the
stem? No; for the least touch of the stem will cause
you a prick, and raise a little burning white head.
What is the meaning of this ? Perhaps a nettle is like
taking trouble, or doing what we do not like — learning
a hard task, or taking a dose of physic, perhaps ; as
long as we dally with it, and touch it, and taste it, and
pity ourselves, it seems very bad ; but take to it bravely,
and grapple with it at once, and there is an end of the
matter, and most likely there is no sting at all. Did
you ever find it so ?
Boys well know that this is the only way to treat
nettles ; and sometimes they take in other children in a
way I do not approve at all, by running after them
with a bunch of nettles, calling out, “ This is the month
that nettles don’t sting and when the poor silly child
has been persuaded to give a timid touch, the very way
to get stung, they laugh, and say, “O, I told no story,
I said nettles didn’t sting the month, not that they
would not sting you.” But I call this a regular cheat,
and very unkind, so I put this in as a warning.
The reason of this is, that all the little white hairs
that cover the stem and leaves of the nettle are bristles,
like a serpent’s tooth, each with a little bag of poison
at the bottom, which a slight pressure squeezes into the
hand through the tiny pipe into the bristle, whereas
228
TIIE HERB OF TIIE FIELD
a good hard squeeze crushes bristle and bag together,
and makes them harmless. It is only such poison as
inflames the skin, but does no harm if eaten. When
vegetables were more scarce, and there was famine in
the land, we hear of boiled nettle-tops being used for
food, and they are somestimes given now to young
turkeys. The flowers grow like many four-stamened
ones in flocks ; they are green, and the fertile have
shorter stems than the barren, which hang out rather
prettily in autumn, along the serrated leaves. In
Australia grows a gigantic nettle tree, which horses
avoid by instinct, as well they may ; for each sting is as
long as a needle, and so full of venom, that it would
almost be death to be stung, at least bad illness.
The amaranth, another everlasting flower, belongs to
this class. It lias chaffy dry scales that do not soon decay,
and the flowers grow close together, some holding five
stamens, others two styles. Of these are the purple
globe amaranth, also the spike, covered with deep-red
blossoms, that when it stands upright, we call prince’s
feather, when it droops, the love-lies-bleeding. Last
year I saw a little girl in a railway carriage, with the
finest love-lies-bleeding I ever met with ; it was wound
in two or three large coils, and tied into her nosegay,
otherwise it would have dragged on the floor ; I really
think that if it had been at its full length, it must have
measured more than a yard. Cockscombs are ama¬
ranths, all their red blossoms gathered into one large
spreading head.
The climbers of the pentagon race have a very pretty
relative here, with the same pinnate leaves, corkscrew
tendrils, bright berries, green blossoms, and climbing
stems — the wild vine, or white bryony, which throws
itself about on all the bushes within its reach, and
DIVIDED FAMILIES.
229
adorns them with its graceful shoots, There is one
which I have been watching all the summer, creeping
up a tall pink thorn, and it is now nearly at the top.
The many-stamened flowers have a beautiful cousin
in the person of that arrow-head, which grows in the
water, its leaves just the shape of a barbed dart, and
their long straight stem like its shaft. The flowers are
white, three-petalled, and with a rich, deep, purple
eye — the barren and fertile just alike, till examined
closely.
The next plant is one that can hardly find a likeness
anywhere — the arum, that is to say, better known to
most of my friends as lords and ladies. Do you not like
creeping along the hedge bank, poking into the clusters of
heart-shaped, black-spotted, handsome, shining leaves,
for the tall, green, rolled-up spike, which your busy
fingers quickly undo, while tongues are busy guessing
whether it will disclose a red-faced lord, with his slender
neck encircled by a red and white collar of gems, or a
delicate white lady. Or here and there, if late enough,
you find what I used to call my lord or my lady in a
coach — the sheath open, and making a beautiful green
bower over its inhabitant, looking, as I now think, like
the drapery we sometimes see in pictures, floating, and
swelled by the wind, over a sea-nymph.
My lord or my lady, is in truth the stem, the collar
of gems is the blossom ; the stamens as usual, grow
above, in the upper row of beads ; the fertile flowers
are beneath, and in time give place to scarlet berries,
which look very bright in the autumn. I believe they
are poisonous, but the root when dried, cleaned, and
ground, becomes a soft white flour, which is known by
the name of arrow-root, or, as it ought to be called,
arum-root. The most esteemed arrow-root is brought
230
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
from the AVest Indies, but our own lords and ladies would
I believe make it just as good. There is another kind
sometimes grown in green-houses, where the sheath is
of the purest white, and the lord, bright yellow, and in
Greece, my lord goes into mourning, and appears quite
black, most beautiful, but with a horrible scent.
To this class also belong all the trees which have
their barren flowers in catkins, and which I pretty well
explained to you in the account of the hazel. It is not
treating the royal oak with due honour to pass it over
so lightly, but you can find a good deal about oaks in
other books, so I will not dwell on it, nor on the beech
and chestnut, for if I once began, I might say so much
about them that this chapter would be too long.
The fir-tree was disposed of among the needle trees,
and I have only now to mention that race which is to be
found in all hot countries — the cucumber, melon, and
gourd. They all have soft trailing stems of marvellously
quick growth, large pinnate leaves, and blossoms gener¬
ally yellow of one petal divided into five ; in the stamen¬
bearing ones, containing three filaments and anthers
closely joined, like the brother-hood class; and in the
pistil-bearing, perched above a great swelling germ,
which in time becomes a very large fruit.
Here in England we are obliged to raise them under
glasses, as the heat is not sufficinet to bring them for-
ward ; and here for want of winds and bees to waft the
pollen, gardeners are obliged to do it themselves, and carry
the stamens to the pistil, before the fruit can be formed.
The cucumber is the most grown and most useful ;
next to this come the melons, handsome round fruits,
full of fleshy pulp, most cool and delicious with its sharp
taste. The water melon is full of juice, which is most
precious to people in hot countries. In Italy, men set
DIVIDED FAMILIES.
231
up booths with shelves of water melons, slices of which
they sell to the thirsty people, who enjoy them exceed¬
ingly ; and in the East they are much prized ; it seems
a special gift of Providence that, with very little water,
these immense plants should grow up bearing such a
profusion of the coolest fruit.
Sometimes the gourd plants are trained over porches
and trellises, so as to make a cool and beautiful bower.
You remember how Jonah rejoiced in the gourd that
grew over him, most likely supplying him with food
and drink, as well as shelter, and how he was grieved
when the worm at its root withered it at once away in
a single night.
Here the first touch of frost is as effectual as the
worm, and our great vegetable marrows, that the day
before threatened to take the whole garden for them¬
selves, with their noble branches, and great leaves, and
mighty fruit, are on the October morning nothing but
a spectacle of yellow ruin and decay, showing indeed
how “ the creature is subject to vanity.”
Some kinds of gourds have a rind which becomes
very hard, and these are very useful to the Hindoos,
and many other dwellers in hot countries. They scrape
out the inside, fill the rind up with sand to prevent
it from contracting, and set it in the sun to dry, when it
becomes a vessel capable of holding water, and often
called a calabash. Another kind is called the bottle-
gourd, because by tying a band round the fruit when
young, it is made to grow into the shape of a bottle.
For many reasons, therefore, these great fruits, though
all kinds are not equally wholesome for food, are very
precious, and are much grown in the East. You know
the prophet Isaiah speaks of the “ daughter of Zion
being left like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,”
232
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
meaning the little hut built in a field of melons, where
a man might be set to watch, lest they should be stolen.
As lonely stood Jerusalem when all her surrounding
villages had been destroyed.
The pumpkin is a fine handsome gourd, often marbled
with patterns of green. In America, it is much used
for cattle, and I believe a horse, at an inn door, will
eat a pumpkin when our horses would be having hay.
A pumpkin pie, too, is one of the favourite dishes ; it
is what we should call a pudding — there is no crust
over it, the pumpkin being mashed up and used with
egg and milk, as we use sago or arrow-root, in making
a pudding.
Pumpkins make ns think of Cinderella’s coach, and
there is another funny story of them with which I will
end my chapter. It is rather old, but perhaps you
may not know it. An idle man once lay down under
an oak tree, and began thinking with himself how
much better he could settle the world, if he had the
power. For instance, what a pity it was to see such a
fine lordly tree as the oak, bearing such a wretched little
fruit as the acorn ; it ought to be ashamed of itself;
while there was the pumpkin going crawling on the
ground, with those large handsome fruits. For his
part, he thought acorns were good enough for such
plants, and that pumpkins ought to grow on oak trees.
Just then he felt a tap on his nose ; he jumped up
in a hurry, and found it was an acorn that had fallen
on him. “ Oh !” cried he, “ how lucky this was not a
pumpkin !”
You may have your laugh, and then think whether
this fable does not show, that when people dare to find
fault with the wisdom of God’s doings, it is their own
ignorance that is displayed.
233
CHAPTER XXIX.
CLASSES XXII. AND XXIII. — DOUBLY-DIVIDED FAMILIES.
Oltr last chapter was on plants that keep their stamens
and pistils in separate flowers on the same plant, this
must be on those that are still further divided, one plant
bearing nothing but pistils, and another nothing but
stamens. Thus some trees are entirely barren, and
never bear any fruit at all, and yet if we pulled them
all up, those which now bear fruit would be equally un¬
productive. For instance, some yew trees are in the
spring covered with white floury heads of pollen, while
on others we see hardly any promise, and yet as autumn
comes on, those are bare which showed the line blos¬
som, while the others are wearing little green cups with
large seeds projecting from them, much like acorns,
and in time the cups become waxy red, and the seeds
black.
But we do not blame the barren plant for showing
us no fruit, for the truth is, that it renders the other
fertile; just as there are many good quiet people who
make no show in the world, and yet to whose example
and advice it is owing that their friends do great deeds.
What a pistil-bearing plant is, without its barren
neighbour, is shown by a foreign pine in the gardens
at Kew, the only one of its species in England. Every
year it tries to form a fir-cone, every year the young
cone withers away for want of the fertilizing pollen.
The Italian pond-plant, vallisneria, is the oddest of the
tribe — its stamen flowers unfasten themselves, and
float on the water to feed the pistils with pollen.
234
THE HERB OF TIIE FIELD.
Who does not love, in early February, to walk out
by the side of the hedge, or coppice wood, while all is
moist and fresh, as the sun melts the morning frost, and
shines with a sweet warm brightness that makes us
talk of spring coming fast, and spy about to see if the
dear green world within the brown hedge is feeling it
yet ?
The honeysuckle is thinking about it ; aye, and on
certain purplish twigs there shine tufts of silver down,
growing alternately on each side of the stem. “ Pussy !
pussy !” we scream with joy — the withy is putting on
its silver buttons, and up we scramble to pull down a
bough, and stroke our lips with that softest, silkiest of
down, the little scales, within which the buds are safely
and warmly guarded from the frosts that will nightly
brace the young bough, or should the spring be rainy,
this same smooth down serves, like the fur of a cat, or
the feathers of a duck, to keep the wet from soaking
into the little tender things so carefully protected.
Sweet spring-like silver pussies, that last all the cold
ungenial time, cheerful and kindly ! we are half sorry
to part with you, when you shoot out into the goslings,
which, however, we love quite as well. And don’t the
bees love them ? Their first taste of fresh sweet pollen
after their winter’s sleep ! How they buzz round, and
load their legs, and what a baking of bee-bread there
must be, on those March days, when brighter sunshine
has unlocked the green buds, and brought out the two
yellow stamens, and the delicious smell from within
each of the silver scales.
The tufts certainly are much like downy yellow
goslings, and are, therefore, well named from them,
soft sweet things that they are ; but we also call them
Palms, because they are in some parts of England
DOUBLY-DIVIDED FAMILIES.
235
carried to church on Palm Sunday, since we have no
real palm trees, in remembrance of the branches that
the disciples cut down from the trees. In other places
the yew branch is used instead, because it is one of the
few trees still green, and its dark leaves show why our
Lord was come to Jerusalem on that day, but I think
the Palm or withy suits best. Its fragrant soft golden
blossoms dare the cold blast of early spring ; and it is
foremost of trees in its praise to its Maker, like the
little children crying Hosanna in that time of trouble
and persecution.
These yellow blossoms are the catkins, the barren
flowers. The fertile ones are not so pretty, they have
thick green pistils, in a spike, each with a little downy
wing to fly away with when the seed is perfect. The
leaf comes out much later than the “ kindly flower.”
The withy belongs to the great genus of Willow, or
Osier, called in Latin, Scilix. There are fifty English
kinds, and plenty more in other countries. Most of
them have a longer and more drooping catkin than the
gosling ; but this, as well as the pistil, always is downy.
They are a useful kind, as baskets small and great can
testify, beginning from the huge bushel basket, which,
when full loaded, bows down the strong man, to the ex¬
quisite little delicate white thing that balances on the
tip of our finger, and just holds some bright little pin¬
cushion. We English have been famous for our basket-
work since the days of wicker chariots, and British
baskets, after which the Roman ladies eagerly sought.
In Holland the bending, yielding osier, is still more
valuable, for it serves to protect the great mud banks
that keep the sea from overflowing the flat country be¬
low, and thus becomes a wall to preserve the whole
population from ruin. Anything harder would break
23 G
TIIE HERB OF TIIE FIELD.
under tlie pressure of the water, but the osier can bend
and yet retain its hold.
The graceful weeping willow, with its long drooping
light green boughs, looks very pretty hanging over the
water, and we honour it and look at it with liking, be¬
cause as its Latin name, Salix Babylonica , reminds us, it
was the tree which grew beside the Euphrates, where
the children of Judah hung their harps when they sat
down and wept, and those who led them away “captive
desired of them a song, and melody in their heaviness.”
The first weeping-willow that came to England was
brought from the marshes of “ proud Euphrates’
stream.” Perhaps you would like to read the story
of some young weeping-willows that grow on the
banks of the Thames, in the beautiful playing-fields at
Eton. You must know that many and many years ago,
some boys named Wellesley were sent to school there,
and there they did, as they did through all their long
lives, what they had to do, with all their might, and
looked chiefly, as he who has just been taken from us
once said, “ to doing their duty in that state of life
in which they had been placed.” It is not, however,
of the great Duke that I am going to tell you, but of
his elder brother, who learnt at Eton to make Latin
verses, which to you no doubt sounds like most difficult
work, and many boys hate very much. But he did his
best in work and play, and so he learnt to love them
both. Well, he grew up, and became a great man, and
was made governor general of India, and great con¬
quests took place under his rule ; and the two brothers
were so great, that Buonaparte said the Wellesleys had
done so much for England, he thought they must mean
to make themselves princes of it, for he had no notion
how men could love their duty better than themselves.
DOUBLY-DIVIDED FAMILIES.
237
But after all this greatness, when Marquis Wellesley
grew old, what do you think was one of his favourite
amusements ? It was writing Latin verses, as he had
done in his school-boy days, and one of the prettiest
poems he ever made was in both Latin and English,
about the willows of Babylon, and the captive Jews
lamenting for their sins and their exile. And when he
died, at eighty-three years of age, he desired to be
buried in the chapel at Eton, and that three weeping
willows should be planted in the playing-fields, that
other Eton boys might be put in mind that as Sion was
ruined because her people fell from their God, so our
only hope of safety and prosperity is in holding fast by
Him, or, as he says in his verses, that “ God’s blessing
on sound faith is Britain’s force.” And though you
are not an Eton boy, and will never be governor of
India, yet I think you can see from his example how
to make your present tasks and way of life a bright
remembrance to go with you through all your days to
come, whether many or few.
A good many trees belong to this twenty-second
class, but I have told you about most of them, and will
just mention one which bears downy catkins, very
beautiful, though most likely you never noticed them ;
and no wonder, for they are so high up, that unless
there was a very high wind to shake them down, they
would never come in your way — I mean the poplar.
Its eight stamens are of as beautiful a crimson colour
as ever you saw, hanging from a curious little fringed
scale, the pistil-bearing tiowers are green, also in cat¬
kins. The poplar came to us from Italy, and is the
most tall and straight of all our trees. An old-
fashioned cottage, with a row of poplars before it, and
bee-hives under them, is one of our pleasantest sights,
238
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
but unluckily for the poor poplar, its Latin name
populus is also the word for the people, and so the
factious Roman first, and afterwards the French,
chose to take it as a sort of mark of rebellion. The
French, in the Revolution of 1848, went about trans¬
planting the poplars from the gardens where they were
quietly growing, and setting them up in the squares of
Paris, calling them trees of liberty, shouting, and firing
cannon, and hanging them over with wreaths of ever¬
lasting flowers. Of course the poor trees all died, and
when the people had grown tired of all this nonsense,
Louis Napoleon had them all pulled up and burnt. I
hope our tall honest poplar trees will never be put to
so bad a use.
The bending four-stamened birch, and the trembling
aspen, are of this class too ; the catkins of the aspen
come tumbling down in May, and strew the paths so
that I have often taken them for hairy caterpillars.
Mistletoe and butcher’s broom you will find among our
Christmas evergreens, so we will not wait to talk about
them, but go on to a relation of our old friends, the
five-stamened climbers with pinnate leaves — I mean the
hop. If you live in a hop district, you know the look
and smell of them most intimately, as they hang in
festoons on their poles, and you will not think that
“hopping” means nothing but going on one leg, as
some other children would say. Almost everywhere
the hop grows wild, flinging its beautiful leaves about
on the hedges, and curling its twisted stem round the
bushes, and very nice the hop tops or young shoots are if
pinched short off, boiled, and eaten on toast like asparagus.
The barren blossoms have a little green calyx, contain¬
ing five yellow stamens, which stand up boldly; the
fertile flowers droop in a beautiful head of loose green
DOUBLY-DIVIDED FAMILIES.
239
scales, each containing a single pistil, and these are the
hops which are gathered in such quantities in Kent
and Surrey, and serve to give bitterness to beer.
Whole families come out to the hopping, and it is a
time when the Irish pour in in numbers to earn the
money that they hope will support them for the rest of
the year. Other swarms come after the hops, a little
aphis, an insect such as we call blight, lives on them,
and would do much harm, if it was not in its turn the
food of the beautiful lady-bird, who as sure as the hop-
aphis arrives, spreads the gauzy wings under her scarlet
shining wing-cases, and flies after it as fast as if, as the
rhyme tells her, her house was on fire, and her children
burning.
Though hops are so common now, there were none
in England till the reign of Henry VIII., when the
saying is —
“ Hops and turkeys, mackerel and beer,
Came to England all in one year.”
The hops came from Flanders, and with them, I
suppose, the French name of beer, for ale had been
English drink, time out of mind, and had been made
with the pretty blue ground-ivy instead of hops, as the
name ale-lioof still reminds us.
Next we come to the six-stamened black bryony,
not the five-stamened white bryony which we had in
the former class. This has heart-shaped and very
glossy leaves, small green blossoms, no tendrils, and
very red berries succeeding its single pistil, and look¬
ing very brilliant in the autumn when the leaves have
turned bright yellow.
Of nine-stamened plants we have more than could
be expected, considering that the flowering rush stands
alone in the ninth class. There is an odd uncommon
240
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
water-plant with three white petals, called Frog-bit,
which is a great prize to botanists ; and under every
hedge in early spring grows a green plant with shining
leaves and long narrow loose spikes of little green
flowers. This is the Dog’s Mercury — why so called I
cannot tell you, nor is it of much use, but everyone
likes it for the sake of spring.
In the yew-tree the barren flowers have neither
calyx nor corolla, but are like a cluster of little white
stands — for the bunches of small stamens, covered with
light buff pollen, which forms a round, floury-looking
head in March or April, when shaken, will cover the
tree with white dust. The fertile flowers are little
scaly white cups, with a single germ, and as they are
not nearly so conspicuous as the barren ones, we are
apt to wonder in autumn why the trees which were so
full of blossom are now without fruit.
The fruit is a very pretty berry ; the seed swells and
grows black, and the calyx gradually enlarges and be¬
comes fleshy, till it grows into a beautiful waxen cup
of a soft red colour, unlike anything else, containing
the black, or rather deep brown, stone.
Yew berries are said to be poisonous, and though
I have seen boys perched all over an old yew-tree,
devouring them with all their might, yet as I believe
village boys will eat anything, whether wholesome or
not, and have a stronger digestion than most people, I
would advise you to consider the berries as rather in¬
tended to please your eyes than your mouth.
One part of the yew-tree is certainly poisonous to
cattle, the leaves and young shoots, especially when
withered. They do not seem to be equally dangerous
when fresh ; but horses, cows, and pigs, have frequently
been killed by eating the half-faded clippings of a yew-
DOUBLY-DIVIDED FAMILIES.
241
hedge. So if ever you have to do with the sweeping
up of such clippings, be careful they are thrown where
animals are not likely to get at them.
In former times it used to be the fashion to orna¬
ment gardens with yew-trees clipped into all manner
of wonderful shapes — peacocks, lions, fans, and pyra¬
mids — and a book was even published on the art of
shaping them. Even now we sometimes see, and very
snug it looks, a gateway under an arch of well-clipped
yew ; and sometimes an old church-yard, with a yew-
tree cut into the shape of a perfect mushroom, with a
bench round the trunk, completely sheltered from the
rain by the matted branches and close foliage.
The yew-tree looks best of all on the borders of
chalk downs, great round dark-green bushes standing
up in the hedges, like over-grown shrubs, of such curi¬
ous shapes that you may know your old friends for
miles off, and their huge, thick, short trunks, containing
such quantities of dry, crumbling, dead wood, that it is
only a wonder how they can prosper as well outwardly
as they seem to do.
I believe there is hardly any tree that lives so long
as the yew. It is two years before the seed grows at
all, and then it is very slow in getting on ; and when
it has reached its prime, it is so hard, and the thick
ever-green leaves keep out wet so well, that it is still
longer in decaying. Perhaps some of the yew-trees
may still be green and fresh, which stood when they
were thought so much of for the archery of England.
Perhaps these old fellows gave some of their branches
to furnish the tough yew bows which sent the cloth-
yard shafts that won the battles of Crecy and Poitiers,
and many another besides ; and the English yeomen
and peasants, thanks to Magna Charta, were well-
16
242
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
cared-for, well-protected, prosperous men, willing to
use their good yew bows in their monarch’s cause.
Yew branches are the Easter deckings of churches,
and sometimes are carried on Palm-Sunday, as the
nearest approach we have to the palm.
And they have from very old times been grown in
church-yards ; indeed, King Edward I. made a law
that they should there be planted.
To the stamen brotherhoods belongs the juniper,
which is not unlike the yew, and grows in low gloomy-
looking tufts on bleak hill sides. It has dark-purple
berries, and it has hardly any blossom. You remember
that Elijah sat him down under a juniper-tree in the
wilderness when he requested for himself that he might
die, and when the angel came to him, and brought him
the food that sustained him in his journey to mount Sinai.
The real palm-trees belong to the divided families.
They are the last I shall have to mention of those
plants that bud at once from the ground nearly at their
full thickness, and grow joint by joint, or sheath by
sheath, not by forming layers of wood. These tribes,
remember, are the grasses, reeds, lilies, orchises, and
now the palms. The growth of an asparagus is more
like that of a palm-tree than anything we have here,
and I have read that an infant palm, when it is in
the state in which we eat asparagus shoots, is more
like a wheat-sheaf than anything else. Thus the palm-
tree never forms such firm solid wood as to be of
much use, and the inner part is the weakest instead of
the strongest. The great body of leaves all grow out
together at the top, and enormous and beautiful leaves
they are, all in one, spreading out so as to form a
glorious crown for the tree, taller than any tree we
ever see here.
DOUBLY-DIVIDED FAMILIES.
243
These unfading palm-leaves have always been the
tokens of victory. The Bible speaks of them as borne
by the martyr-host in heaven, and they are believed to
have been the branches strewn by the disciples on the
entrance into Jerusalem. On Palm-Sunday, through
all the south of Europe, they are carried in procession,
solemnly blessed, and laid up with high honour to be
kept for the rest of the year.
The palm of Palestine is, I believe, the date palm,
which has feathery leaves, and bears the sweet fruit
that is so precious to the Arabs in the desert,
forming almost their whole subsistence on long
journeys.
It is one of those that can live furthest from the
equator ; these trees in general can only bear a very hot
climate. The only one I ever saw was in a hot-house,
a fan -palm, it grew much like a grass, but at the joint,
instead of hanging down a streamer, it put out a cir¬
cular fan with a jagged edge. Some palms have a
very few leaves, spreading out like umbrellas, but im¬
mense feathers and plumes are the most usual shape.
Some are deep green, some silver- white on the under
side, some fringed with yellow and blue. I cannot tell
you half what I have read of their beauty. You
must look for it in foreign books, especially those
about South America, and the South-Sea Islands, in
which places they grow to the grandest size. That
which is best known to us is the cocoa-nut palm, at
least its hard round fruits are. Fine fellows, as large
as a baby’s head, covered with brown fibre, and their
shell so hard, that it will serve to break a man’s head,
as the ill-treated elephant showed. At the bottom of
the nut are the three spots, called the monkey’s face,
two hard, the third soft, as the young plant might have
244
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
sprouted through it. Piercing this, out flows the
delicious cocoa-nut milk, with its nutty flavour, nearly
a wine-glass full, even when we have them here, after
a long voyage. Then, when the nut is sawn in two,
we find each half lined with a white substance as
pleasant to the taste as the milk ; and when this is
eaten, the shells make nice strong bowls, and may be
prettily carved by those who are clever enough. As
walnuts have a green case outside their shell, so cocoa-
nuts are packed in immense triangular coverings, con¬
sisting of brown fibre. Perhaps the use of them to the
nut is, that it may not be broken by falling from such a
height as the top of the tree. To the natives of the
Asiatic Islands they are useful for cordage, and to us
for matting and many other purposes.
The Pirijao of South America has the handsomest
fruit in the world, egg-shaped, as large as a peach, of
a golden colour, shaded with crimson on one side. It
grows in clusters of seventy or eighty, like giants’
painted grapes, each tree bearing three of these
mighty bunches, hanging down under delicate flag-like
leaves, curled at the edges, all at the summit of one
straight trunk sixty or seventy feet in height. There
are seldom seeds in these lovely fruits, which are used
by the Indians like potatoes. In fact, 1 believe there
is no palm that is not in some Avay useful, and of
which the fruit is not wholesome. The stamen-bearing
flowers are, in some kinds, very handsome, generally
growing like those of their lesser lily-like cousins, in a
spatha. They are generally yellowish and crowded
closely together, but now and then they are large and
of a dazzling white, hanging down in resplendent gar¬
lands. But there are multitudes of palms besides those
that have been correctly described, and I must men-
DOUBLY-DIVIDED FAMILIES.
245
tion no more, except one word of the plantain, the
king of leaves, one leaf large enough to roof a small
house !
There is another class, the twenty-third, where the
flowers are very irregular, some are perfect, with both
stamens and pistils, others have only stamens, and
others only pistils. The only wild flowers of this class
are the pellitory-of-the-wall, which has small purple
flowers in tufts, and the orache, almost a goose-foot.
The mimosa is of this race; it has very pretty balls
of blossom, and one sort is called the sensitive plant,
because, if a finger is held near it, the leaves shrink
and fold back in dread before it can even touch them.
Were you ever puzzled to find the blossom of the
fig? Strange to sa}^, the fig’s flower is inside its fruit.
You know the little green figs in the spring. They
hold the flowers. If you cut them open, you would
find them full of the little things, some perfect, others
imperfect. Their perfection consists in having three
stamens and a pistil with one seed. If they have onlv
stamens, the calyx is three-cleft ; if only pistils, it is
five-parted. The great Banyan of India, the tree which
sends down branches, and roots them again, so as to be
a whole grove in itself, has a scarlet fig, and there are
many other sorts. That with the palmate leaves, and
grv en figs, which grows in our gardens, is, as you will
be pleased to hear, the fig-tree of Palestine, the same
sort that shaded Nathanael, and that, growing with the
vine, gave to the Israelites the idea of plenty and of
peace. The oldest fig-tree in England is at Oxford,
whither it was brought from Aleppo in the reign of
King Charles I., and it is so strong and healthy, that
in 1833 its figs gained a prize.
Here ends my list of the plants with stamens and
246
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
pistils — one more chapter upon the unseen blossoms
that we have missed before, and I shall have told you
all I know, or think you would understand, about the
vegetable world.
CHAPTER XXX.
CLASS XXIV. — FUNGUSES.
Our chapters have brought us back to the unseen blos¬
soms again ; for the twenty-fourth, the last class, con¬
sists entirely of these, and includes those of which I
spoke to you in the autumn months — namely, the ferns,
mosses, and lichens, with three other races, which I
did not then mention — the horse-tails, mushrooms, and
sea-weeds.
The horse-tails, or Dutch rushes, are spoken of by
some books as a sort of fern, and in some respects they
do resemble them. I think you can hardly fail to know
them by sight, for in poor ground they are a very
troublesome Aveed. They have one holloAv light-green
stem, in sheaths one Avithin the other, each joint mark¬
ed bv a black band, and bearing no leaves, but whorls
of straight branches, spreading out round it like the
spokes of a wheel, and often branched again. The
edges of the sheaths are deeply cut, and bordered very
prettily with black. The stem is excessively harsh,
like that of the sedges, and for the same reason ; it is
full of silex or flint, Avhich, with a powerful magnifier,
may actually be seen in fine grains, and it is so rough
as to be sometimes used as a delicate file. The plant
looks a little like a child’s first attempt at drawing a
FUNGUSES.
247
fir-tree ; indeed, I have known a person who had never
seen the horse-tail, coming on a quantity of it sud¬
denly, and at first taking it for a plantation of young
larches.
This is when it is in its wintry state, and the tree¬
like stem answers to the frond of the fern. The part
which answers to blossom appears early in the year.
It is a curious-looking thing, growing about two inches
above ground, and perhaps it may have puzzled you :
it is more the shape of a nine-pin than of anything else
that I know — a nine-pin with a head I mean, an
oblong egg-shaped head, growing on a straight stalk,
and of a very pale buff colour, almost white. On this
head spring up dark-brown shields, or scales, some¬
thing like those of the shield-fern, standing up like
very small umbrellas, and containing beneath them an
immense quantity of fine light-coloured dust. Botanists
puzzled themselves for a long time about this dust,
whether it was seed or pollen ; but at last, when look¬
ing at it with a very strong glass, as it lay on a sheet
of white paper, it was found that some of the particles
had minute threads proceeding from them, and that
with these they had a sort of motion, like that of a
spider on its eight legs. This was thought to be like
those movements by which some seeds are known to
impel themselves towards places fit for their growth,
so it was supposed that these were the seed-grains, and
the rest of the dust was instead of pollen.
As to the fungus race, they are more mysterious
still, and more unlike other plants. They seem to
begin from almost nothing ; even the larger sorts are
at first only visible in a thin layer of something like a
cobweb, which, when something happens to favour its
growth, throws up little humps, which gradually grow
248
TIIE HERB OF THE FIELD.
larger and longer, and gain a sort of stalk ; then, if cut
in two lengthways, there appears a hollow place, and
within this a cap is formed, supported on a stem ; the
cap and stem grow on, and become more solid and
fleshy, while the outer case grows thinner and weaker,
till at last they break through it, and show themselves
to the world, a sort of round fleshy table with one leg,
and the under-side consisting of a great number of rays
or ribs, which botanists call gills, and believe to con¬
tain purses of seeds, though these have never been seen,
and some doubt whether there are any.
The morel and truffle are the only English plants of
this tribe that it is here thought safe to use for food,
besides the mushroom, an excellent example of the
mode of growth. You all know the pretty white head,
and the bright pink gills underneath, that one looks for
so anxiously, to see whether it is a real mushroom or
not ; and when it is in its prime you may see the re¬
mains of its old case, hanging down like a binge round
the edge of a parasol, and making a sort of ornamental
band round the stem ; or when it has not yet broken
through the case, do we not know it well as a button ?
Who can live near upland meadows and not like
mushrooming? The baskets we prepare, full of hope
and glee, and then the walk on the fresh autumn day,
the green short grass, and then the merry outcries,
“ Oh ! there’s one ; I see such a beauty !” and the race
to get to it ending often in “ Oh dear ! it is nothing but
a bit of chalk !” “ Well, I am sure I see a whole lot
there ; I am sure they are mushrooms this time, for
they are in a ring !” Another race, and such an outcry
from the first to come up, “ Puffs, puffs ! only puffs after
all !” But at last the real ring is spied out, arid mush¬
rooms free from doubt or blame are found, white above,
FUNGUSES.
249
pink below, delicious in scent — some old and brown,
some little buttons, but all worth gathering and carry¬
ing home, perhaps to be sorted and sold, perhaps to be
offered as a great present to the elder people’s dinner.
Under a hedge an enormous mushroom may now and
then be found, which, though pink, white, and fragrant,
some people call a horse-mushroom, and reject, but I
don’t believe there is any poison in it, and if it is not as
delicate as the smaller kinds, it is cpiite fit to be used
for catsup. Mushrooms grow, as we have said, in
dark-green rings on the grass ; I believe this is because
they render the soil richer, and therefore the grass
grows greener among their roots, if roots they may be
called ; but it was a pretty old notion that these rings
were made by fairies dancing in circles, and that he
who went to sleep within one would see the wonders
of Fairyland.
It is not only the true mushroom that forms fairy
rings, so do also several kinds of fungus, or, according
to their English name, toadstools. I must say toads
seem to be better accommodated with furniture than
any other animal, to judge by the beautiful cushions
their stools sometimes wear. Here is one covered with
rich shining crimsom satin — another with crimson vel¬
vet, with embossed white spots — another of the most
brilliant orange — another with deep purple — another a
beautiful lilac, with white lace-work over it, like a
lady’s ball-dress. And yet you would most likely call
them nasty poison toadstools, and kick them over !
That many kinds are poisonous to man is quite true,
and therefore people should be warned against them ; •
but it is not necessary that everything should be of
positive use to us to be admired, and I do not think we
have a right to call any of the works of the Creator,
250
THE IIERB OF THE FIELD.
nasty. I am sure we should not, if we once looked well
into them.
I believe the wholesomeness of many kinds of fungus
depends on the soil in which they grow, and the climate
of their country, so that many sorts which we avoid
are eaten in Italy, Germany, and Russia, not that I
would by any means advise you to try any experiments
upon them.
The little yellowish toadstool that grows in fairy
rings, in such numbers that it looks as if it might be
a crowd of fairies, has a French name, Chanterelle,
which we may call it by if we wish to distinguish it.
The ovate toadstool is often to be seen, in shape much
like an umbrella, pale-brown above, and darker below,
verging on purple, and the great oyster-toadstool is to
be found in damp woods, growing on stumps of old
trees, quite white, without a stem, and unlike others of
its tribe, formed like a cup or vase, the gills outside,
and what is usually the cap, concave (or hollow) in¬
stead of convex, often in most graceful forms. There
is the velvet-stalked toadstool also, red above, and
brown below, also a parasite on trees. The verdigris,
and the orange-toadstool you may likewise find. All
these with gills on the under side belong to the genus
called in Latin, Agaricus, in English, mushroom, or
toadstool. They all flourish chiefly in autumn, and de¬
light in damp, and what we should call unwholesomeness.
Another genus has no English name, though one
species at least is common in England, the Boletus, I
mean, a red shining fungus, growing on old trees in
autumn, very glossy and polished above, and beneath,
of a spongy consistence, and dull greenish-yellow
colour, full of little pores or holes, which are supposed
to answer the same purpose as the gills.
FUNGUSES.
251
The morel reverses the mushroom ; it has a stem
and round cap, but the under side is the smooth part,
the upper is covered with net-work. One sort of the
morel is good to eat.
The puff-ball shows nothing outside but a hard
white case, gathered together at the bottom. In its
younger state the inside is mealy, not unlike, in sub¬
stance and colour, mustard as spread on a poultice,
but when ripe, the white skin splits, and lets loose an
immense quantity of the finest brown dust, supposed
to be seed, though how formed no one knows. Puff¬
balls are of every size, from a marble upwards ; I have
seen them larger than a cricket-ball, and it is said that
they grow as big as a man’s head. Everyone knows
the funny things, and how many have been angry with
them for pretending to look like mushrooms ; and yet
they are a very good sign, for wherever they grow,
mushrooms are almost certain likewise to be found.
Many boys have fired off their dust at each other, and
they are sometimes dried and burnt before a bee-hive,
as their smoke will put the bees to sleep without killing
them. There is one eatable sort of puff, the truffle,
which grows under ground, and is a brown unsightly
thing, not by any means like the white ball on our
downs. It is found and gathered in a curious way, by
training dogs, and sometimes pigs, to smell it out,
and then digging for it. It is very rare, and is gene¬
rally sent to London to fetch a high price for great
people’s grand dinners. The only truffles I ever saw
were brought to the door many years ago, by a man
who had his little clever truffle-hunting dog with him,
quite as much of a sight as the strange delicacies he
found.
In the dry ditches and hedge-sides you may find, in
252
THE HEKB OF THE FIELD.
autumn and winter, a jewel of the way-side, perched
upon some dry, withered old stick. It is an exquisite
scarlet cup, of such a colour as no paint can ever equal,
soft, bright, glowing, well suiting its name of fairy bath.
Where could Queen Mab find a more beautiful cup to
hold her dew-drop bath? They grow on little bits of
broken stick, and serve our village children instead of
nosegays in the winter. It is a great prize to get a
large one. Their Latin name is Peziza.
Other kinds of fungus are like jell)1" ; there is a yel¬
low kind especially growing on old railings, and named
St. Gundula’s Lamp, after a German lady who used to
visit the poor and sick in the early dawn, with a ser¬
vant carrying a lamp to light her on her way. The
multitudes of fungus are indeed beyond reckoning, they
meet us everywhere, wherever there is decay or injury
they grow up ; dry rot which destroys timber is be¬
lieved to be a fungus ; so is smut in wheat ; and some
people think the same of the potato blight. Funguses
grow in every unexpected place ; white furry forests
of them, by name mildew, start up on preserves, and
dismay the housekeeper. Blue mould makes woods for
the mites to range in on an old cheese, and grows up
feeding on the blacking of old shoes. Anything will
make a soil ‘‘or these smallest of vegetables — ink, jam,
leather, paper, wood, they want nothing but damp to
set them growing, and where or what they spring from
is beyond the guess of any wise man who ever yet
lived, unless he has the true wisdom to turn all his
knowledge into what each little child starts from, the
beginning and the end of all learning, that God made
them all, and His ways are past finding out.
253
CHAPTER XXXI.
CLASS XXIV. — SEA-WEEDS.
One tribe more remains, the sea-weeds, as strange
and untraceable as the other unseen blossoms. Some
seem to have stems and leaves — fronds, as they are
called — and seed-producing organs, with shields or
purses, but these are only the more perfect kinds ;
others are all jelly or moist leafiness and fibre, and
produce other plants from any part. Of those that do
produce seed, the greater number have two different
kinds of parts for the purpose ; but both these form
seed, so that they cannot answer to the stamens and
pistils of other plants.
Their colours are either green, olive, or red, in every
kind of shade. The green kinds generally grow in
shallow water, the olive in somewhat deeper, the red
in the deepest of all ; but this is only a general rule,
and there are many exceptions.
Some grow rooted at the bottom of the sea, or on
stones, rocks, or even shells ; others float about on the
water. I have been so little by the sea-side that I have
very little acquaintance with these wonders, and of
those that I remember by sight, I did not know the
proper names, for it was before I learnt any botany.
There was what we used to call the lion’s-tail, but
which is rightly the sea-tangle, or wand, a hard stem
as large round as a walking-stick, ending in a bunch of
long broad streamers or ribbons, all dark brown, and
somewhat slimy to the touch, and very salt in smell, aye,
and making our fingers so ; but little we recked of that,
254
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
when we danced about, dragging them behind us, on
the shingly beach. Those are certainly rooted, and
now and then, when brought ashore by the tide, bring
a stone with them, as well as a number of little limpet-
shells, whose inhabitants live on them. The fructifi¬
cation is hard to find ; it is in little clouds of purses in
the body of the streamers. In Scotland these used to
be eaten, and where wood was scarce, knife handles,
and other small matters, have been made of the stem.
Some people hang up a lion’s-tail in their houses, be¬
cause damp in the air makes it stretch, so that it serves
to show them what the weather is likely to be.
Thinking about the lion’s-tails I played with before I
was seven years old, has brought back the recollection
of another branched pretty sort, which we used to find
bordering high-water mark, generally rather dry and
old. This had swellings along it, from which it is called
knotted fucus. They were, in fact, hollow places filled
with air, the use of them being to make it float on the
water ; and it is the same again with another sort, look¬
ing like a string of brown gooseberries. These the little
boy who was my sea-side playfellow, used to crack, as
inland children do poppies, and you may hear them
snap under the foot as you tread on them. If you want
a name for it, you may call it swine-tangle ; the people
of Gothland call it so, because they give it to their
pigs, when boiled and mixed with flour. The blossom
is at the end of the fronds.
These, and many more which I do not remember,
used to be our delight in a little rocky hollow of the
beach, covered with grey and red shingly stones,
famous for ducks and drakes. It was no place for
shells, except limpets, and the solid part of the cuttle¬
fish ; but there were the fresh curling breaking waves,
SEA-WEEDS.
255
and such a distance of the blue bright sea. We were
very happy there.
Some years after this, I had a little more friendship
with sea-weeds, in certain boating days, when we,
merry children, used to stretch out our hands to catch
them as they floated by, and call them by droll names
of our own. Our favourite was what we called the
Mermaid’s staylace, a long round string like whip-cord,
some straight, some spirally twisted, or as we used to
say, these latter were the old laces that the mermaid
had used and thrown away.
Once I remember our trying to dress an old stump
of a wooden doll in sea-weeds, and calling her a mer¬
maid, but it was a slippery unsuccessful business, and
I don’t think the ancient blue-eyed lady could have
been too comfortable. They are nothing but a hollow
stem, jointed within, and filled with air — nothing more
is visible. They grow to be thirty or forty feet long,
and sometimes in shallow places are a hindrance to
boats. We used to gaze down when the sun shone
into the clear water of the little bays, and look at the
crabs crawling sideways about among these strange
weeds and the stones. I have since learnt that sea-
laces is their real name, and that in Shetland they are
called Luckie Minnie’s lines. They may well be called
so, for when dried and twisted they are tough enough
to serve for fishing-lines. Learned books say they are
formed by one long thread twisted in a spiral, so as to
make a tube of this immense length. It is covered
with hairy fibres, the seeds in cases growing among
them over the whole surface of the frond.
Sea-thongs, like the laces, only flat, and not round,
float about with them. The thongs, however, grow
out of little green round saucers, which in some places
25G
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
ma}r be seen covering the rocks, like green buttons.
The saucers live two years, the thongs only one. The
thongs are in fact the blossoms, and bear the seed
within them, the round spots with which they are
covered being the pores through which the seeds come
out.
Do you recollect how Columbus was hindered by the
multitudes that were matted together in the Atlantic ?
and how the sailors were frightened, and fancied they
had come to the edge of the world, which they thought
like a great plate, and that they should stick fast,
and never come home again ? It is the same still, at
certain seasons, in that part of the Atlantic ; such
quantities of sea-weed floats about, that vessels are in
danger of getting entangled, and the surface of the
ocean looks like a great marshy meadow, as far as the
eye can reach. It is a kind often cast on our coasts,
with leaf-like fronds, and its seeds in round berries,
from which it is sometimes called sea-grapes, but it
is better known as gulf-weed. It is one of the green
kinds.
Sea-weeds are eaten by the cattle of the Hebrides,
which have little grass to eat, and go down to look for
them at low-water, keeping the time of the tide as
sensibly as their masters could.
Sea-weed is burnt in great quantities in Scotland ;
its ashes, called Kelp, are useful for making both soap
and glass, on account of the quantity of the substance
called alkali, or potash, that they contain.
Laver, a black shiny weed, found on rocks in Corn¬
wall and Devonshire, is stewed with water and vinegar,
and makes a very good relish to meat, when eaten very
hot. Some kinds are full of gluey matter ; one grow¬
ing in Ireland is called Carigeen moss, and is some-
SEA-WEEDS.
257
times boiled down into jelly; and that which is found
on the coast of Java, is the substance of which the swal¬
lows build the nests that the Chinese make into soup.
There is a Turkey-feather sea- weed, which anyone
near the shore should look lor, and may perchance
find, as it grows in shallow pools left by the tide, in
the hollows of rocks. I have never seen it, but my
books say no one can mistake it ; it is shaped like a
fan, or like the short broad feathers of a turkey, and
is covered with minute hair-like fibres, which catch
the light, so that the frond shines with rainbow colours,
and deserves its Latin name of the peacock. It grows
in plenty in the Mediterranean, and is also found on
our southern English coasts. Pray search for it.
The oyster-green is a large pale-green frond, not
unlike a bit of some torn leaf. It is often used to
cover oysters, which is the reason it is so called.
We now come to the red kinds, those beautifully
delicate things that we see polished through the
shallow water, and that look very well, even when
spread out on paper. They have no English names,
unfortunately, for people have been very apt to over¬
look them, like the fisherman who, when a botanist
spread out a little branched specimen of clear rosy-
red, which he had just found, said, “he did not think
there could be anything so bonnie to be got in the
bay.”
How bonnie they are you must learn by your own
eyes, and perhaps you may some day go further into
their history ; I can tell you very little about them.
But I must not pass over the corallines, which stand
on the borders of vegetable and mineral, something
between the two.
Y ou have heard of the coral worm, or zoophyte, that
17
258
TIIE HERB OF THE FIELD*
extracts from the sea- water the lime of which they
build those wondrous stony dwellings, which may in
time become rocks and islands. For a long time it was
a doubt whether these red, hard, branching sea-weeds,
the corallines, were vegetables, or the houses of animals ;
but at last they were clearly proved to have no animal
life in them, and to be, in fact, stony vegetables. They
are full of lime, quite stiff and hard, and if held to a
candle, will give a beautiful white light. One white
coralline, which is extremely hard, is used as part of
the mortar of the Cathedral of Iona, which is so hard
that it is easier to break the stones than to displace
them. Another builder uses it — a tiny shell-fish, whose
own house is too small for him, as he has a beautiful
orange fringework projecting beyond his shell. To
guard this soft unprotected part, the little creature
builds himself a grotto, of bits of stone, and of almost
equally hard coralline, all bound together with silk of
his own spinning, and softly lined with the same.
There’s a wonder of the deep for you !
Conferva is the name of the slimy green hairy weed
found on stones and rocks within high-water mark,
spreading out when the water comes to it, and drying
up and becoming like a green crust when left to itself.
Powerful microscopes discover in it, what opens to
us another field of our own ignorance. They find that
inside the thin skin that covers it, there are an un¬
told host of little grains, or atoms, each with a tiny
beak, and that these are like live things dancing, whirl¬
ing round each other, reeling, twirling backwards and
forwards, and round and round, not regularly, but as
if each had a movement at its own will.
Sometimes they multiply, come thicker together,
divide into little parties, and form a new membrane,
SEA- WEEDS.
259
or outside case ; and this motion only takes place at
sun-rise. At other times of the day they are still.
What are they ? Are they analogous to seed ?
These strange things are not found only in the sea ;
there are many sorts named confervas to be found in
fresh water, especially stagnant pools, which they line
with green. You have seen some of them hundreds of
times, and know their disagreeable green shiny look,
hut those who have examined them tell us of their
beauty. One sort grows on stones, and is very like
toad’s-spawn. Another kind is the oscillatoria, long
green hairy stuff, that oscillates with the movement of
the stream, and is thought really to have a motion of
its own.
And here again we stop short ; for this is the end of
the Chapters on Flowers, and I am sorry for it, my
little readers, for they have been a great pleasure to
me. They have taught me much that was new, and
made me look deeper into books to clear my notions,
and certify what I knew before ; they have set me
watching, more than I did before, the lovely things in
nature ; they have turned my mind back to many
precious recollections of happy hours and friends of old
days ; and I hope that thinking about all these has
helped me, as I trust it may help some of you, to think
more about the Power and Goodness that made the
“field joyful, and all that is in it; planted trees for a
dwelling for the birds of the air, and prepared grass for
the cattle, green herb for the service of man, wine that
maketh glad the heart of man, and bread to strengthen
man’s heart.”
All study of nature must turn to His honour and
glory, if only used right. Perhaps some day you will
learn far more than I can teach you, some, it may be
260
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
from books, but all can and may, from a humble, obe¬
dient, adoring heart and eye, that turns from God’s
works to God Himself. That love is true wisdom,
and the flowers of the field are precious to us, as help¬
ing us to reach up to it.
“ What, though I trace each herb and flower
That drinks the morning’s dew,
Did I not own Jehovah’s Power,
How vain were all I knew !”
261
COMMON ENGLISH PLANTS,
ARRANGED BY TIIEIR CLASSES.
CLASS I. — 1 STAMEN. — Monandria.
Glass-wort, Chap. XIII. 95.
Mare’s-tail, Chap. XIII. 95.
CLASS II.— 2 STAMEN S. — Diandria.
Order 1. — 1 pistil . — Monogynia.
Privet, Chap. XIII. 100.
Ash, Chap. XIII. 101.
Enchanters’ Nightshade, Chap. XIII. 101.
Speedwell, or Veronica, Chap. XIII. 101.
Butter-wort, Chap. XIII. 101.
Bladder-wort — a yellow flower, with a long spur, its
leaves have small vessels, which fill with air like
bladders, and float the blossom to the surface of the
water, till the seed is ready to be ripened under water.
Gipsy- wort, Chap. XIII. 101.
Sage, Chap. XIII. 101.
Duckweed, Chap. XIII. 102.
Vervain, or Verbena, Chap. XIII. 100.
262
TIIE HERB OF THE FIELD.
CLASS III.— 3 STAMENS. — Triandria.
Order 1. — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Valerian — corolla, of one petal, divided into five; a
spur at the bottom, long filaments growing on it.
Three kinds are common, all have many blossoms in
one head.
Red valerian is a handsome bright red flower, often
found on old walls and rocks.
Great wild valerian is of a pale flesh-colour, and grows
near rivers ; it has a woody stem, three or four feet
high, and deeply serrated leaves. Cats are very fond
of its smell, and will roll upon it in delight.
Small valerian — a little plant, its stem unbranclied, and
its blossoms a pale blush colour, growing in wet
meadows. All three kinds flower rather late in
summer.
Corn Salad, or Lamb’s lettuce — a very small plant,
growing close to the ground in stubble, under corn,
or in fallow-land. The stem is very much forked,
the leaves without footstalks, the root fibrous, the
blossoms of one petal, in five divisions, and of a pale
grey or blue colour, about the size of those of shep¬
herd’s purse.
Crocus, Chap. I. 4.
Iris, or Flag, Chap. XIV. 104.
Cotton-grass, Chap. XIV. 111.
Order 2. — 2 pistils. — Digynia.
Grass, Chap. XIV. 107.
Order 3. — 3 pistils. — Trigynia.
Water-duckweed — a little white flower, growing near
pools and streams, in thick tufts.
All-seed — a little creeper on neglected ground, the
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
263
stems much branched, lying flat on the ground, the
leaves in stars of four together, the blossoms greenish
white.
CLASS IV.— 4 STAMENS. — Tetrandria
Order 1. — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Teazel, Chap. XV. 115.
Scabious, Chap. XV. 113.
Field madder — small and grey, much like lamb's-lettuee,
but it may be known from it by having four stamens,
four divisions of the corolla, its leaves in whorls of six.
Wood-ruff,
Cross-wort,
Ladies’-bed-straw,
Gliders, or goose-grass,
Plantain, Chap. XV. 117.
Burnet, Chap. XV. 118.
Cornel or dogwood, a bush often seen by road-sides,
with white flowers in cymes, like small heads of elder,
the fruit a purple berry, the branches red.
Ladies’-mantle, Chap. XV. 121.
Order 4. — 4 pistils. — Tetragynia.
Holly, Chap. XI. 80.
Pond- weed — green leaves, floating on the water, and
spikes rather like plantain, only greener, found in
ponds and rivers.
Radiola — a tiny plant growing on gravelly heathy
soil, its blossoms white.
CLASS V.— 5 STAMEN S. — Pentandria.
Order 1. — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Forget-me-not, _ U„ rv
264
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Gromwell — a pentagon flower, the seeds four, and
particularly hard and polished, the blossoms small,
growing on a branched stem, the leaves sharpened,
and with short foot-stalks. There are four English
kinds : the common gromwell, a pale buff colour ; the
corn gromwell, quite white ; the purple, a deep blue,
but not common ; the sea gromwell, beautiful blue,
and a large handsome flower, growing on the sea
shore.
Anchusa, Chap. XYI. 123.
Houndstongue, Chap. XYI. 123.
Lung- wort, Chap. XYI. 123.
Comfrey, Chap. XYI. 123.
Borage, Chap. XYI. 123.
Catch-weed — a veiy well-named plant, it is all over
little white hooks that give it a hoary appearance,
and cling to whatever touches it. It grows in waste
ground, and has a pale little insignificant blue pen¬
tagon flower.
Bugloss — a rough bristly plant, with a blue flower,
growing in sandy places.
Yiper’s-bugloss, Chap. XYI. 121.
Primrose, "4
Cowslip, >Chap. IY. 19.
Oxlip, J
Bogbean, Chap. IY. 24.
Featherfoil, or water- violet. You will be lucky if you
find it. It has a tall spike of primrose-shaped lilac
flowers, and feathery leaves, growing in the water.
Yellow Loose-strife,
Money-wort,
Yellow Pimpernel,
Pimpernel, Chap. XYI. 129.
Bindweed, Chap. XYI. 132.
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
265
Canterbury-bells,
Bell-flowers,
Venus’s looking-glass, y Chap. VII. 45.
Harebell,
Campanula,
Sheep’s-bit — a blue flower, rather like a scabious in
general appearance, growing on heaths.
Touch-me-not, Chap. XVII. 136.
Violet,
Dog-violet,
Heart’s-ease, )
Mullein, Chap. XVI. 130.
Henbane, Chap. XVI. 123.
Nightshade, Chap. XVI. 125.
Deadly Nightshade, Chap. XVI. 124.
Centaury, Chap. XVII. 134.
Honeysuckle, Chap. XVI. 134.
Spindle tree, Chap. XI. 84.
} Chap. XVH. 137.
Ivy, Chap. XI. 84, 136.
Periwinkle, Chap. IV. 22.
Order 2. — 2 pistils. — Digynia.
Goosefoot, )
Good King Henry, ) 1
Elm, Chap. XVIII. 144.
| Chap. XIX. 156.
Dodder, Chap. XVII. 133.
Gentian, Chap. XVII. 134.
Sanicle, Chap. XIX. 154.
Carrot, Chap. XIX. 152.
Earth-nut, Chap. XIX. 152.
Hog-weed, Chap. XIX. 153.
Cow parsley, Chap. XIX. 153.
266
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Sea Holly — a curious pale sea-green plant, covered
with a white bloom, the leaves opposite, with a
prickly stiff border, much like holly leaves, and a
blue blossom, in heads like small teazels.
Hemlock, Chap. XIX. 153.
Gout-weed, Chap. XIX. 153.
Angelica, Chap. XIX. 152.
Samphire, an umbelliferous plant, growing by the sea¬
side, often made into a pickle.
Order 3. — 3 pistils. — Trigynia.
Guelder rose, Chap. XIX. 155.
Elder, Chap. XIX. 154.
Order 4. — 4 pistils. — Tetragynia.
Grass of Parnassus — a handsome white flower, growing
in boggy places on mountains.
Thrift, Chap. XIX. 157.
Flax, Chap. XIX. 157.
Order 5. — 5 pistils. — Pcntagynia.
Sundew, Chap. XIX. 157.
CLASS VI.— 6 STAMENS. — Ilexandria.
Order 1. — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Snow-drop, Chap. I. 2.
Daffodil, Chap. II. 6. — a white flower in a sheath.
Garlick, Chap. XX. 164.
Wild Onion — a curious plant, like a little onion, heads
growing at the top of a stalk, at first enclosed in a
sheath, and when this bursts, coming out in flowers
and little bulbs, which plant themselves.
Fritillary, Chap. XX. 160.
Star of Bethlehem, Chap. XX. 162.
Blue-bell, )
Hyacinth, f ChaP' XX‘ 1C2'
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
207
Asphodel, Chap. XX. 166.
Asparagus, Chap. XX. 165.
Lily of the valley, Chap. XX. 165.
Solomon’s seal, Chap. XX. 164.
Rush, Chap. XX. 166.
Wood-rush, Chap. XX. 167.
Barberry, Chap. XX. 165.
Order 3. — 3 pistils. — Trigynia.
Dock, Chap. XX. 168.
Order 5. — Many pistils. — Polygnia.
Water-plantain, Chap. XX. 166.
CLASS VII.— 7 STAMENS.
Chickweed winter green, Chap. XXI. 161).
CLASS VIII.— 8 STAMENS. — Octandria.
Order 1. — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Chap. XII. 47.
Wortleberry, Chap. XXI. 172.
Ling, Chap. XII. 46.
Heath, Chap. XII. 46.
Maple, Chap. XXI. 175.
Order 3. — 3 pistils. — Trigynia.
Buck-wheat, j chap XXj. 175.
Persicaria, )
Order 4. — 4 pistils. — Tetragynia.
Herb Paris, Chap. XXL 175.
Adoxa, Chap. XXL 175.
CLASS IX.— 9 STAMEN S. — Enneandria.
Flowering rush, Chap. XXI. 175.
Willow-herb,
Codlings and Cream,
268
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
CLASS X.— 10 STAMEN S. — Decandria.
Order 1. — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Yellow bird’s-nest — a yellow, scaly, leafless plant, grow¬
ing on stumps of trees, a great curiosity.
Arbutus, Chap. XXI. 176.
Order 2. — 2 pistils. — Digynia.
Saxifrage, Chap. XXI. 176.
Soap- wort, Chap. XXI. 176.
Pink, Chap. XXI. 177.
Order 3.-3 pistils. — Trigynia.
Sand-wort, Chap. XXI. 177.
Order 5. — 5 pistils. — Pentcigynia.
Penny-wort, Chap. XXI. 178.
Stone-crop, Chap. XXI. 178.
Wood-sorrel, Chap. XXI. 178.
Corn-cockle, Chap. XXI. 178.
Lychnis, I
Rose-campion, VCliap. XXI. 177.
Ragged-robin,
CLASS XI.— 4 STAMENS TO 20 .—Dodecandria.
Order 1 . — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Purple Loose-strife, Chap. XXI. 178.
Order 2. — 2 pistils. — Digynia.
Agrimony, Chap. XXI. 178.
Order 3. — 3 pistils. — Trigynia.
Wild Mignionette,
W oad,
| Chap. XXL 179.
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
269
Order 4. — 4 pistils. — Tetragynia.
House-leek, Chap. XXI. 179.
CLASS XII.— MANY STAMENS GROWING ON THE
CALYX. — Icosandrici.
Order 1. — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Cherry,
Black-thorn,
Plum,
I Chap. V. 28 — all these have one pistil,
( as their single stone proves.
Order 5. — 5 pistils. — Pentagynia.
Medlar,
Hawthorn,
I Chap. V. 27.
Apple, ) Ch y 2g_
Pear, )
Mountain Ash, Chap. XXII. 184.
Meadow-sweet, Chap. XXII. 184.
Order 6. — Many pistils. — Hexagynia.
riar, >Chap.
)
Rose,
Sweet-briar
Dog-rose
Strawberry, Chap. Y. 35.
Raspberry, j Ch y 35>
Bramble, I
Y. 31.
Cinquefoil — pretty strawberry-shaped yellow flowers,
of which there are many kinds. The commonest is
the silver-weed, or goose-grass, which grows in dry
places, by dusty way-sides. Its leaves are feather¬
shaped, and white outside, which gives the plant a
silvery look.
270
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Torrnentil — also yellow, but with four petals. It is a
pretty little smiling plant, the last of the little yellow
hedge-creepers to hide its cheerful face. I have often
seen it blowing in the winter.
Geum — an odd reddish bell, found near the water side,
the pale red petals holding a perfect bush of greenish
styles.
CLASS XIII. — MANY STAMENS GROWING ON THE
RECEPTACLE. — Polyandria.
Order 1. — 1 pistil. — Monogynia.
Celandine — a yellow flower, the petals adhering so
loosely it is hardly possible to gather it without their
flying away ; the germ long, growing into a pod ; the
leaves grey and pinnate. It blossoms all the sum¬
mer, and looks like a hedge butter-cup, without its
polish.
Horn-poppies, Chap. XXII. 186.
Poppy, Chap. XXII. 185.
Water Lily, Chap. XXII. 186.
Lime, Chap. XXII. 187.
Order 5. — 5 pistils. — Digynia.
Peony, Chap. XXII. 187.
Larkspur, Chap. XXII. 187.
Monk’s-hood, Chap. XXII. 187.
Columbine, Chap. XXII. 188.
Order G. — Many pistils. — Pofygynia.
Anemone, Chap. HI. 13.
Clematis, Chap. XXII. 189.
Meadow-rue, Chap. XXII. 188.
Pheasant’s-eye, Chap. XXII. 186.
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
271
Pile- wort, Chap. III. 1G.
Crow-foot, j Ch IIL x
Butter- cup, >
Marsh Marigold, Chap. III.
o.
17.
CLASS XIV.— TWO LONG AND TWO SHORT
STAMENS. — Didynamia.
LABIATE FLOWERS.
Order 1. — 4 naked seeds. — Gymnospermia.
Bugle — a dingy blue flower, growing in whorls on a
short simple stem, which, as well as the leaves, is
tinged with red. It grows in quantities in dry woods
in July.
Germander — also called wood-sage, its leaf is very like
sage, and grows in pairs on each side of a square
stem, ending in a spike of pale greenish yellow
flowers. It is to be found in woods and hedgerows
CD
late in the year.
Cat-mint — a soft downy plant, the blossoms white, ex¬
cept the lower lip, which is spotted with red. Cats
are as fond of it as of valerian.
Mint — grey blossoms, growing in thick clusters, sepa¬
rated by pairs of greyish leaves, smelling strongly.
Ground-ivy, or all-heal, Chap. VII.
Archangel, or dead-nettle, Chap. VII.
Wound- wort — a tall plant, with nettle-shaped leaves
growing in pairs, the blossoms in whorls on a spike,
dark purple, or crimson ; and if you study them
closely, you will see they are prettily-veined with
white.
Hemp-nettle — a rarer sort, is sometimes found in corn-
272
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
fields ; tlie corolla yellow, and the lip marked with
purple.
Weasel-snout, or yellow dead-nettle — a plant every
one knows.
Betony — a bright red purple flower, in a spike, on a
simple stem, the leaves serrated, each on a stem from
the root. It grows in woods.
Marjoram, Chap. VII. 51.
Thyme,
Basil-thyme,
Melittis — a beautiful large flower, shaped much like
the dead-nettle, white, with a large purple spot on
its lip.
Skull-cap, Chap. VII. 51.
Self-heal, Chap. VII. 52.
Order 2. — Seeds enclosed in a capsule. — Angiospermia.
Bartsia — a small low reddish plant with dingy purple
flowers, growing in dry rubbish.
Yellow-rattle — a yellow flower, on a swelling calyx,
growing in meadows, called rattle, because the seeds
when ripe rattle in their vessel.
Yellow-cow-wlieat — much like the rattle, but it grows
in woods, the calyx is not so swelling, the leaves are
linear, and it has curiously pinnate bracts, the stems
are black and wiry.
Eye-bright — is a little beauty, growing close to the
ground in pastures ; the blossom white, marked with
brown and yellow, prettily cut at the edge.
Red-rattle — two kinds, large and small, the latter
grows close to the ground, the former has a branching
stem ; both have notched leaves, and large handsome
pink blossoms. They grow in marshes.
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
273
Toadflax, Chap. VII. 51.
Snapdragon, Chap. VII. 50.
Fig wort — a tall, bushy plant, the stem hollow, and
very square ; the blossoms dingy red, looking rather
as if they had been eaten off by insects.
Foxglove, Chap. VII. 49.
Broom-rape — a marvellous brown thing, that looks as
if* it never lived; blossoms, leaves, root, and all, of
one pale brown ; nothing flower-like about it but its
yellow anthers, within their brown cave. The leaves
are linear and brown, and the root is a most curious
succession of scales. It fastens itself on the roots of
broom and furze, and sucks their juices, instead of
going direct to the earth itself. You may see its
brown spikes on heaths and commons in June and
July, and it is well worth examining.
CLASS XV.— TWO SHORT AND FOUR LONG
STAMEN S. — Tetradynamia.
CRUCIFORM FLOWERS.
Order 1. — Seeds in a capsule. — Siliculosa.
Mithridate Mustard — a small white flower, growing in
clusters on the borders of fields.
Shepherd’s purse,
Treacle mustard,
Order 2. — Seeds in a long pod. — Siliquosa.
Cardamine, or lady’s-smock, Chap. XXIII. 194.
Water-cress, Chap. XXI. 194.
Stock, Chap. XXL 190.
Wall-flower, Chap. XXI. 191.
18
274
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Jack-by-the -hedge, Chap. XXI. 194.
Cabbage, Chap. XXI.
Mustard, Chap. XXI. 193.
Radish, Chap. XXI. 193.
Charlock — a yellow blossom that no one wishes for in
their fields.
CLASS XVI.— STAMENS IN ONE BROTHERHOOD.—
Monadelphia.
Crane’s-bill, Chap. XXIY. 198.
Mallow, Chap. XXIV. 201.
CLASS XVII.— STAMENS IN TWO BROTHERHOODS.—
Diadelphia.
BUTTERFLY FLOWERS.
Order I. — 6 stamens. — Hexandria.
F umitory — the only plant of the class that is not
properly a butterfly flower. It has two parcels of
stamens, each bearing three anthers. It is a com¬
mon weed in gardens, the leaves of a pale sea-green,
much pinnate, and the blossoms of a pale red, tipped
with a much darker colour, all smoky-looking, which
is the reason of its name of fumitory, from fumus,
smoke.
Order 2. — 8 stamens. — Octandria.
Milkwort, Chap. VI. 41.
Order 3. — 10 stamens. — Decandria.
Broom, Chap. VI. 40.
Furze, or Gorse, Chap. VI. 40.
Rest-harrow — an enemy to farmers, as it has a tough,
spreading, woody root, that runs over neglected fields,
and does arrest the harrow and plough. The stem,
too, is tough and woody, very hard to break, as those
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
275
know who have tried to adorn an autumn nosegay,
with its very pretty blossoms, the standard blush-
colour, the wings deep rose-colour. They are about
the size of furze blossom, and the leaves are pale
green.
Vetch,
Vetchling,
Wild pea,
Milk vetch,
there are many sorts, but you must be a
> better botanist than this book will make
you, to know them apart.
Tare, Chap. VI. 41. Observe that this tiny little grey
flower is not thought to be the tare of Scripture.
That is believed to be a kind of grass like darnel,
like wheat, but perfectly useless.
Bird’s-foot — one of the smallest flowers to be found,
growing on heaths, close to the ground, the leaves
like tiny saintfoin, the blossoms white, streaked with
rose-colour.
Saintfoin, Chap. VI. 42.
Chap. VI. 42.
Bird’s-foot Trefoil, Chap. VI. 41.
Trefoil, j
Clover, »
CLASS XVIII.— MANY BROTHERHOODS OF
STAMENS. — Polyadelphia.
St. John’s Wort, Chap. XXYL 208.
CLASS XIX.— COMPOUND FLOWERS. — Syngenesia.
Order 1. — All the florets perfect . — JEqualis.
Dandelion, Chap. VIII. GO.
Oxtongue — a flower like a dandelion, the stem tall,
branched, and prickly, the leaves embracing it, and
their edge and surface roughened with prickles,
276
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
much like the tongue of an ox, the calyx very prettily
folded.
Sow-thistle — dandelion-like, soft and juicy, its stem
branched, an ox-tongue all but the prickles, of which
it has only a few at the edge of the leaves, which
have often a very pretty pink mid rib.
Lettuce — very small dandelion flowers, and leaves that
everyone knows.
Hawkweed — dandelion-like, but of a pretty pale sul¬
phur colour, and the stem quite dry, without the
succulent juice of the others. The stems are simple,
it grows in dry places, and the “ clocks” are particu¬
larly beautiful, each seed bearing such a perfect star.
Lapsana — tiny dandelions on tall stems.
Wild succory — like garden succory, with a pretty blue
flower.
Burdock, Chap. VIII. 60.
Saw-wort — a purple flower like a thistle, but with
fewer prickles, and those chiefly at the edges of the
leaves — whence its name.
Thistle, Chap. VIII. 59.
Bur Marigold, or Goldilocks — a yellow flower with a
somewhat drooping head, and long lance-shaped
leaves, growing in marshy places.
Order 2. — Outer florets having pistils alone , inner florets perfect. —
Superflua.
Tansy — yellow star-like flowers.
Wormwood — grey pale downy oft-divided leaves, light
yellow flowers.
Cudweed, Chap. VIII. 58.
Flea-bane, Chap. VIII. 57.
Elecampane — a fine large yellow blossom like a sun¬
flower.
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
277
Golden Rod, Chap. VIII. 57.
Sea-aster — a grey flower, like a Michaelmas daisy,
growing in sea-mud.
Daisy, Chap. VIII. 55.
Ox-eye, Chap. VIII. 56.
Corn-Chrysanthemum, Chap. VIII. 57.
Camomile, Chap. VIII. 57.
Yarrow, or Milfoil-heads of white flowers, so small
that at first sight it might almost be taken for an
umbellate flower, now and then a little tinged with
pink. It is the leaf that is its peculiar beauty, one
long mid rib, feathered twice in two divisions of long
pointed segments, each bearing almost a thousand
little leaves in one, from which its name milfoil —
1000 leaves.
Order 3. — Outer florets empty. — Frustranea.
Knap -weed,
Corn-flower,
Chap. VIII. 61.
CLASS XX.— STAMENS ON THE PISTIL. — Gynandria.
(orchises.)
Orchis, Chap. XXVII. 214.
Tway-blade, Chap. XXVII. 217.
Ophrys, Chap. XXVII. 218.
Ladies’-tresses, Chap. XXVII. 217.
Helleborine, Chap. XXVII. 118.
CLASS XXI.— STAMENS AND PISTILS IN DIFFERENT
FLOWERS ON THE SAME PLANT. — Moncecia.
Spurge, Chap. XXVIII. 222.
Bulrush, Chap. XXVIII. 224.
Sedge, Chap. XXVIII. 226.
278
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Bur-reed, Chap. XXVIII. 225.
Alder, Chap. XXVIII. 227.
Box, Chap. XXVIII. 229.
Nettle, Chap. XXVIII. 227.
White Bryony, Chap. XXVIII. 228.
Arrow-head, Chap. XXVIII. 229.
Arum, Chap. XXVIII. 229.
Oak, Chap. XXVIII. 230.
Chestnut — it has thick green catkins, and is a hand¬
some tree, Chap. XXVIII. 230.
Beech — a catkined tree, bearing nuts called beech-
masts. The leaves small, the bark smooth, Chap.
XXVIII. 230.
Birch, Chap. XXIX. 238.
Hazel, Chap. II. 9.
Pine, Chap. XII. 90.
CLASS XXII.— STAMENS AND PISTILS ON DIF¬
FERENT PLANTS. — Dicecici.
Willow, Chap. XXIX. 235.
Butcher’s-broom, Chap. XXIX. 87.
Mistletoe, Chap. XXIX. 83.
Hop, Chap. XXIX. 238.
Black Bryony, Chap. XXIX. 239.
Poplar, Chap. XXIX. 237.
Hogs’ Mercury, Chap. XXIX. 240.
Frog-bit, Chap. XXIX. 240.
Juniper, Chap. XXIX. 242.
Yew, Chap. XXIX. 240.
CLASS XXIII.— FLOWERS SOMETIMES PERFECT,
SOMETIMES WITH THEIR PARTS SEPARATE.—
Polygamia .
Pellitory, Chap. XXIX. 245.
Orache, Chap. XXIX. 245.
PLANTS ARRANGED BY CLASSES.
CLASS XXMf.—Cryptogamia.
UNSEEN BLOSSOMS.
Order 1. — Ferns.
Hart’s-tongue,
Scaly hart’s-tongue,
| Clmp. X. 70.
Royal Osmond, or Flowering-fern, Chap. X.
Polypody, Chap. X. 72.
Black maiden-hair, Chap. X. 72.
Spleen wort, Chap. X. 72.
Lady-fern, Chap. X. 73.
Shield-fern, Chap. X. 73.
Brake, Chap. X. 74.
Blechnum, Chap. X. 75.
Adder’s-tongue, Chap. X. 76.
Mountain parsley, Chap. X. 76.
Order 2. — Mosses.
Hypnum, Chap. IX. 68.
Swan’s-neck, 3
Order 3. — Club Moss.
Fox-tail, Chap. IX. 69.
Order 4. — Horsetail.
Horstail, Chap. XXX. 246.
Order 5. — Lichen.
Liverwort, Chap. IX. 66.
Lungwort, Chap. IX. 66.
Rein-deer moss, Chap. IX. 66.
Cup-lichen, Chap. IX. 66.
Tripe-de-roclie, Chap. IX. 66.
280
THE HERB OF THE FIELD.
Order 6. — Fungus.
Mushroom,
Chanterelle,
Ovate-toadstool,
Oyster-toadstool,
V elvet-stalked,
Orange,
Boletus, Chap. XXX. 250.
Morel, Chap. XXX. 248
Puff-ball,
Truffle,
V Chap. XXX. 250.
| Chap.
XXX. 251.
Peziza, or fairy-bath, Chap. XXX. 252.
St. Grundula’s Lamp, Chap. XXX. 252.
Dry-rot, Chap. XXX. 252.
Mildew, Chap. XXX. 252.
Blue-mould, Chap. XXX. 252.
Order 7. — Sea-weed.
Sea-tangle, Chap. XXXI. 253.
Swine-tangle, Chap. XXXI. 254.
Sea-thongs, Chap. XXXI. 258.
Sea-laces, Chap. XXXI. 255.
Sea-grapes, or Gulf-weed, Chap. XXXI. 256.
Turkey-feather, Chap. XXXI. 257.
Oyster-green, Chap. XXXI. 257.
Carrigeen, Chap. XXXI. 256.
Coralline, Chap. XXXI. 257.
Conferva, Chap. XXXI. 258.
Toad-spawn, Chap. XXXI. 259.
Oscillatoria, Chap. XXXI. 259.
281
INDEX.
Page
Page
Adder’s tongue
-
76
Azalia
-
173
Adoxa
- 175
Bachelor’s buttons
- 16
Agaricus
-
250
Balsam
-
135
Agrimony -
- 178
Bamboo
- 112
Alder -
-
227
Banyan
-
245
Alkanet
- 123
Banksia rose
- 33
Almond
-
183
Barberry
-
165
Althea
- 201
Barley
- 110
All seed
-
262
Bartsia
-
272
Amaranth -
58, 228
Basil
- 51
Amei'ican cowslip
-
125
Basil-thyme
-
52
American groundsel
- 58
Bay
- 175
Anagallis
-
130
Bean -
-
39
Anchusa -
- 123
Bedstraw -
- 120
Anemone
.
13
Beech -
-
230
Angelica -
- 152
Bee larkspur
- 187
Apple
-
28
Bee orchis
-
219
Apricot
- 30
Beet
- 156
Aquilegia
-
188
Belladonna lily
-
161
Araucaria -
- 90
Bell flowers
- 45
Arbutus
-
176
Betony
-
272
Archangel
- 52
Bindweed
- 132
Arrow-head
-
239
Birch -
-
238
Artichoke
- 53
Birdsfoot -
- 275
Arum -
-
229
Birdsfoot trefoil
-
41
Ash
- 101
Birds’-eye primula
- 21
Asparagus
-
165
Bird’s-nest
-
267
Aspen
- 238
Bird’s-nest orchis
- 217
Asphodel
-
166
Blackberry
-
34
Atropa
- 124
Black bryony
- 239
Auricula
m
22
Black-eyed Susan
-
201
Austrian briar
- 32
Black maiden hair
- 72
282
INDEX.
Page
Page
Bladder campion
-
177
Canterbury bells
-
45
Bladder wort
-
2G1
Caraway -
-
-
152
Blechnum
-
75
Cardamine
-
-
194
Bloody warrior %
-
191
Carigeen -
-
-
256
Blue bells
-
162
Carnation
-
-
177
Blue bells of Scotland
-
45
Carrot
-
-
152
Bog bean
-
24
Catchfly
-
-
177
Bog pimpernel
-
130
Catmint
-
-
271
Boletus
-
250
Catstail
-
-
224
Borage
-
123
Cauliflower
-
-
192
Bottle gourd -
-
231
Cedar -
-
-
93
Box
-
227
Celandine -
-
-
270
Bracken
-
74
Celery -
-
-
152
Bramble -
-
34
Centaury -
-
-
134
Bread-fruit
-
221
Cerealia
-
-
no
Broccoli
-
192
Chandelier hemlock
-
153
Brome grass -
-
111
Chanterelle
-
-
250
Brook lime
-
101
Charlock -
-
-
274
Broom
-
40
Cherry
-
-
30
Broom rape
-
273
Chestnut -
-
-
278
Bryony
-
228
Chickweed
-
-
177
Bryum
-
68
China rose
-
-
34
Buck wheat
-
175
Chinese primrose
-
22
Budlea
-
119
Chrysanthemum
-
-
57
Bugle -
-
271
Cinnamon
-
-
176
Bulrush
-
224
Cinquefoil
-
-
269
Burdock
-
60
Cistus
-
-
187
Bur marigold
-
276
Citron
-
-
213
Bumet
-
118
Clary -
-
-
51
Bur-reed -
-
225
Clematis -
-
-
188
Butchers’ broom
-
87
Cliders
-
-
120
Butter-cup
-
15
Clove pink
-
-
177
Butterfly orchis
-
216
Clover
-
-
42
Butter-wort
-
101
Club-moss
-
-
69
Butter and eggs
-
7
Cocoa-nut
-
-
243
Cockle
-
-
178
Cabbage -
-
192
Cock’s comb
-
-
228
Cabbage rose -
-
33
Codlings and
cream
-
47
Cactus
-
180
Colewort
-
-
192
Calico flowers
-
173
Columbine
-
-
188
Camomile
-
57
Comfrey
-
-
123
Campanula
-
44
Conferva -
-
-
258
Camphor -
-
176
Convolvulus
-
-
132
Campion
-
177
Corallines -
-
-
257
Canary-bird flower
-
174
Corn -
-
-
108
Candy-tuft
-
195
Corn-cockle
-
-
178
Cane
-
112
C orn- chrysanthemum
-
57
INDEX. 283
Page
Page
Cornel
-
- 263
Earth-nut -
-
-
152
Corn-flag
-
106
Eglantine
-
32
Corn-flower
-
- 61
Egyptian wheat
-
-
110
Corn-salad
•
262
Elder -
-
154
Cotton
•
- 202
Elm
-
-
144
Cotton-grass -
-
111
Enchanter’s niglit-shade -
101
Cow-parsley
-
- 153
Esperances
-
-
16
Cowslip
-
19
Espiritu santo -
-
219
Crab
-
- 28
Euphorbia -
-
-
223
Crane’s-bill
-
198
Everlasting
-
58
Cranberry -
-
- 173
Eye-bright
-
-
272
Crocus -
-
4
Cross-wort
-
- 119
Fair maids of February
-
4
Crown imperial
-
161
Fair maids of France
-
16
Crowfoot -
•
- 15
Fairy bath
-
252
Cuckoo flower -
-
177
Fan-palm -
-
-
241
Cuckoo flower
-
• 194
Fat-hen
-
156
Cucumber
-
230
Fennel
-
-
152
Cudweed -
-
- 58
Fern -
-
70
Cup lichen
-
66
Field madder
-
-
263
Currant
-
- 137
Fig
-
245
Cypress
-
94
Fig-wort
-
-
273
Fir
-
90
Daffodil
-
- 6
Flag
-
-
104
Dahlia -
-
57
Flax -
-
157
Daisy
-
- 55
Flea-bane -
-
-
57
Damask rose -
-
33
Fleur-de-lys
-
104
Dandelion -
-
- 60
Flowering fern
-
-
71
Date palm
-
243
Flowering rush
-
175
Datura
-
- 132
Fly ophrys
-
-
219
Deadly nightshade
-
124
French bean -
-
38
Dead-nettle
-
- 52
French willow herb
-
47
Dew-berry
-
34
Fringed lily
-
24
Dock
-
- 167
Fritillary -
-
-
160
Dodder
-
133
Frog-bit
240
Dog rose -
-
- 32
Forget-me-not
-
-
24
Dog violet
-
25
Fox-glove
-
49
Dog’s mercury
-
- 240
F ox-tail
-
-
69
Dog wood
-
263
Fuchsia
-
48
Dove’s-foot crane’s-bill
- 198
Fungus
-
-
247
Dove orchis
-
219
Furze -
-
40
Dry-rot
-
- 252
Duckweed
-
102
Garlick
-
-
164
Dutch rushes
-
- 246
Gentian
-
134
Dwale -
-
124
Geranium -
-
-
199
Dwarf furze
-
- 41
Germander speedwell -
101
Eagle fern
-
75
Germander
-
-
271
284
INDEX.
Page
Page
Geum
- 270
Hop
- 238
Gillia -
-
131
Horned poppy
-
186
Gipsy-wort
- 101
Horse-chestnut
- 169
Gladiolus
-
106
Horse-tail
-
246
Glasswort -
- 95
Hound’s-tongue
- 123
Golden rod
-
57
House-leek
•
179
Goldilocks
- 276
Hyacinth -
- 163
Good King Henry
-
156
Hypnum
-
68
Gooseberry
- 137
Goosefoot
-
156
Impatiens
-
136
Goose-grass
- 120
Indian corn
- 223
Gorse -
-
40
Indian cress
-
174
Gourd
- 230
Indian pink
- 177
Goutweed
-
153
Ipomea
-
133
Grapes
- 140
Iris - -
- 104
Grass
-
107
Ivy -
-
84, 136
Grass of Parnassus
- 266
Ground ivy
-
52
J ack-in-a-box
- 21
Groundsel
- 57
Jack-by-the-hedge
-
194
Guelder rose -
-
155
Jerusalem artichoke
- 54
Guernsey lily
- 161
Jessamine
-
98
Gulf-weed
-
25 6
Jointed glass- wort -
- 95
Gum-cistus
- 187
Jonquil
-
7
J uly flower
- 191
Hart’s-tongue -
-
71
Jumping Betty
-
136
Harebell -
- 45
Juniper
- 242
Hawthorn
-
27
Hawkweed
61, 276
Kail
- 192
Hazel -
-
9
Kalmia
-
173
Heath
- 45
King cup -
- 15
Heart’s-ease
-
26
Knap-weed
-
61
Heath pea -
- 41
Knee-liolm
- 87
Hedge mustard
-
194
Knock-bead
-
117
Helleborine
- 218
Knotted fucus
- 254
Hemlock
-
153
Hemp nettle
- 271
Laburnum
- 39
Henbane
-
123
Ladies’ bed-straw
-
120
Hepatica -
- 14
Lady fern -
- 73
Herb Paris
-
175
Lady’s fingers -
-
41
Herb Robert
- 198
Lady’s mantle
- 121
Hibiscus
-
201
Lady’s smock -
-
194
Hoary plantain
- 118
Lady’s tresses
- 217
Hogweed
-
153
Lamb’s lettuce
-
262
Holly
80, 121
Lapsana -
- 276
Holy oak
-
200
Larch -
-
93
Honesty -
- 195
Larkspur -
- 187
Honeysuckle -
-
134
Laurel
-
31
INDEX.
285
Page
Page
Laurustinus
-
156
Mazereum -
- 174
Lavender
-
51
Michaelmas daisy
-
57
Laver
-
256
Mignionette
- 178
Lent lily
-
6
Mildew
-
252
Lemon
-
212
Milfoil
- 277
Lettuce
-
276
Milk-wort
-
41
Lichen
•
65
Mimosa
- 245
Lilac -
-
97
Mint -
-
271
Lily
•
158
Mistletoe -
- 83
Lily of the valley
-
164
Mithridate mustard
-
273
Lime-tree -
-
187
Monkey-flower
- 51
Lime -
-
212
Monk’s-hood -
-
187
Ling
-
46
Moneywort
- 129
Lion’s-tail
-
258
Moonwort
-
195
Liver-wort
-
66
Morel
- 248
Loose-strife
-
129
Mouse-ear scorpion-grass
24
Lox*ds and ladies -
-
229
Moss
- 67
Love-in-idleness
-
27
Moss rose
-
33
Love-lies-bleeding
-
228
Mould
- 252
Lotus -
-
41
Mountain-ash -
-
184
Lucerne
•
42
Mountain-parsley -
- 76
Luckie Minnie’s lines
-
255
Mullein
-
130
Lung-wort
-
66
Musk
- 51
Lung-wort
-
123
Musk-mallow -
-
201
Lupin
-
41
Mushroom
- 248
Lychnis
-
177
Mustard
-
193
Myrtle
- 182
Maiden-hair
-
72
Maize -
-
223
Narcissus
6
Mallow
-
201
Nasturtium
- 174
Malope
-
201
Nectarine
-
30
Mangle-wurzel
-
157
Nettle
- 227
Man-tway-blade
-
217
Nightshade
-
125
Maple
-
173
Noli-me-tangere
- 136
Mare’s-tail
-
95
Marigold -
-
17
Oak
-
230
Marsh marigold
-
17
Oats
- 110
Marjoram -
-
51
Oat-grass
-
111
Martagon
-
160
Old man’s beard -
- 189
May
-
27
Olive -
•
99
May wings
-
41
Onion
- 164
Meadow crane’s-bill
-
199
Ophrys
-
218
Meadow rue
-
188
Orache
- 245
Meadow scabious -
-
114
Orange
-
208
Meadow sweet
-
184
Orchis
- 214
Melitis
-
272
Oscillatoria
-
259
Melon -
-
230
Osmunda regalis -
- 71
286 INDEX.
Page
Page
Osmunda -
-
- 71
Primrose -
-
-
17
Ox-eye daisy -
-
56
Primula
-
19
Ox-lip
-
- 19
Prince’s feather
-
-
228
Ox-tongue
-
275
Privet -
-
100
Oyster-green
-
- 257
Protea
-
-
121
Osier -
-
235
Provence rose -
-
33
Prunella
-
-
52
Palm
-
- 242
Puff-ball
-
251
Pansey
-
27
Pumpkin -
-
-
232
Papyrus
-
- 167
Purple loose-strife
-
178
Park-leaves
-
207
Parsley
-
- 152
Quiver grass
-
-
111
Pasque-flower -
-
12, 13
Queen of the meadow
-
184
Passion-flower
-
- 196
Patience-dock
-
168
Radish
-
-
193
Pea
-
- 36
Ragged-robin -
-
177
Peach -
-
30
Ragweed -
-
-
57
Pear
-
- 30
Ranunculus
-
15
Pelargonium -
-
199
Raspberry -
-
-
35
Pellitory -
-
- 245
Ray-grass
-
111
Pencilled crane’s
-bill
-
199
Red-rattle -
-
-
272
Pennywort
-
- 178
Red-robin
-
177
Penstemon
-
51
Reed-mace
-
-
224
Peony
-
- 187
Rein-deer moss
-
66
Periwinkle
-
22
Rest-harrow
-
-
274
Persicaria -
-
- 175
Rhododendron
.
173
Peziza
-
252
Rhubarb
-
-
168
Pheasant-eye
-
- 186
Ribes -
-
136
Phlox -
-
131
Ribwort
-
-
117
Picotee
-
- 177
Rice
•
111
Pilewort
-
16
Rocket
-
194
Pimento
-
182
Rocket vellow-weed
179
Pimpernel -
-
- 129
Rock-brake
-
-
76
Pine
-
90
Rose -
-
31
Pine-apple
-
- 164
Rose-campion
-
-
177
Pink -
-
177
Rosemary
-
51
Pirijao
-
- 244
Rowan
-
-
184
Plantain
-
117
Rush -
-
166
Polyanthus
-
21
Rye
-
-
110
Polypody -
-
- 72
Pomegranate -
-
182
Saffron
-
5
Poplar
-
- 237
Sage
•
51,
101
Poppy -
-
185
Sandwort
177
Poppy anemone
-
- 14
Sainfoin
-
_
42
Portugal laurel
-
31
Saint Gundula’s lamp
-
252
Potatoe
-
- 126
Saint John’s wort
-
-
208
Prickly eomfrey
-
123
Salix -
-
235
INDEX.
287
Page
t
Page
Salvia
-
51
Spindle-tree
-
84
Samphire
•
266
Spleen-wort
-
-
73
Sanicle
-
- 154
Spurge
-
222
Sandwort
-
177
Star of Bethlehem
-
-
162
Sauce alone
-
- 194
Star-wort
-
177
Saw-wort
-
276
Stone-crop -
-
-
178
Saxifrage -
-
- 176
Stinking-flag -
-
104
Scabious
-
113
Stitch-wort
-
-
177
Scarlet-runner
-
- 38
Stock -
-
190
Scotch fir
-
90
Strawberry
-
-
35
Scotch rose
-
- 32
Strawberry-tree -
-
176
Sea-aster
-
277
Sugar-cane
-
-
112
Sea-laces -
-
- 255
Sun-dew
-
157
Sea-grapes
-
256
Swan’s-neck
-
69
Sea-tangle -
-
- 253
Sweet-pea
-
36
Sea-thongs
-
255
Sweet-briar
-
-
32
Sea-wand -
-
- 253
Sweet-William
-
176
Sea-weeds
-
253
Swine-tangle
-
-
254
Sedge
-
- 226
Sun-flower
-
54
Self-heal
-
52
Sycamore -
-
-
174
Sensitive-plant
-
- 245
Shaddock
-
212
Tansy -
-
276
Shepherd’s needle
-
- 152
Tare
-
-
41
Shepherd’s purse
-
195
Tea
-
204
Shepherd’s weather-glass
- 129
Teazel
-
-
115
Shamrock
-
42
Thistle
-
59
Shield-fern
-
- 73
Thrift
-
-
157
Silene -
-
177
Thorn-apple
-
132
Silver fir
-
90
Thunbergia
-
-
133
Silver-weed
-
- 269
Thyme
-
51
Skewer-wood -
-
84
Tiger-lily -
-
-
159
Skull-cap -
-
- 51
Toad-flax
-
51
Smut -
-
252
Toad-spawn
-
-
259
Snake-flower
-
- 160
Toad-stool
-
249
Snap-dragon -
-
50
Tormentil -
-
-
269
Snow-ball tree
-
- 155
Touch-me-not
-
136
Snowbeny
-
156
Traveller’s joy
-
-
189
Snowdrop -
-
2
Treacle mustard
-
195
Soapwort
-
176
Trefoil
-
-
42
Solanum
-
- 126
Trifolium incarnatum
-
42
Solomon’s seal -
-
164
Tripe-de-roche
-
-
66
Sorrel-dock
-
- 168
Tropeolum
-
174
Sow-thistle
-
276
Truffle
-
-
251
Speedwell -
-
- 101
Tulip -
-
160
Spinach
-
- 156
Turkey-feather
-
-
257
Spider-ophrys -
-
219
Turk’s cap
-
159
Spider-wort
-
- 166
Turnip
-
-
193
288
INDEX.
Tussock-grass -
_
Page
112
White lily -
Page
- 159
Tutsan
- 207
White robin
177
Tway-blade
-
217
White thorn
- 27
Valerian -
- 262
Whortle-berry -
Wild succory
172
- 276
Valisneria
-
233
Wild vine
228
V egetable-marro w
- 231
Willow
- 235
Verbena -
-
100
Willow herb
47
Venus’ comb
- 152
Wind-flower
- 13
Venus’ looking-glass
-
45
Winter-green -
169
Veronica *
- 101
Withy
- 235
Vervain -
-
100
Woad -
179
Vetch
- 41
Wood-anemone
- 13
Vetchling
-
41
Woodbine
134
Victoria lily -
- 186
Woodruff -
- 119
Vine
-
140
Wood-rush
167
Violet
- 25
Wood-sorrel
- 178
Viper’s bugloss
-
121
Woody-nightshade
125
Virgin’s bower
- 189
W ormwood
- 276
Wart- weed
222
Wound-wort
Wych-elm -
271
- 150
Wall-flower
Water-cress
.
- 191
194
Yarrow -
277
Water-chickweed -
- 262
Yellow bird’s-nest -
- 265
Water-dock
-
167
Yellow dead-nettle
272
Water-lily -
- 186
Yellow flag
- 104
Water-melon -
-
230
Yellow lark-heel
174
Water-plaintain
- 166
Yellow loose-strife
- 129
Way-faring tree
-
155
Yellow-weed
170
Weasel-snout
- 272
Yellow- wort
- 172
W eeping- willow
-
236
Yellow pimpernel
129
Weymouth pine
- 92
Yellow rattle
- 272
Wheat -
-
108
Yellow cow- wheat
272
White bottle
- 177
Yew
- 240
White bryony -
228
York-and-Lancaster
rose - 33
John and Charles Mozley, Printers, Derby,
Library
of the
University of Toronto